Miranda Fricker

When someone speaks but is not heard because of their accent, or their sex, or the color of their skin, they suffer a distinctive form of injustice—they are undermined as a knower. This kind of injustice, which I call testimonial injustice, is not only an ethical problem but also a political one, for citizens are not free unless they get a fair hearing when they try to contest wrongful treatment. I shall argue that not only individuals but also public _institutions_ need to have the virtue of testimonial justice. If our police, our juries, our complaints panels lack that virtue, then some groups cannot contest. And if you can’t do that, you do not have political freedom.

The overarching purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. This chapter sets about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams's diagnostic engagement with skepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. The chapter then develops three key aspects of Edward Craig's “practical explication” of the concept of knowledge so that they may be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical anti-skeptical impetus. In this way the chapter supports and augments the socialized anti-skeptical case mounted by Williams, and so shows that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology.

This text encourages students to engage with key problems and arguments in ethics through a series of classic and contemporary readings. This text encourages students to engage with ethical issues through a series of classic and contemporary readings Readings are accompanied by interactive commentary from the editors Inspires students to think about the nature of moral philosophy and to draw comparisons between different traditions Themes include: the nature of goodness, subjectivity and objectivity, justice and virtue, moral motivation, moral obligation, and literature as moral philosophy Readings range from Plato’s _Republic_ to Rawls’ _A Theory of Justice_.

This paper explores the synergy of Humean and Nietzschean positive and negative energies in Williams ethical philosophy. The discussion concentrates attention somewhat on Truth and Truthfulness, the book in which Williams developed his innovatively hybrid philosophical method—that of State of Nature Genealogy. This distinctive combination of naturalism and historicism concentrates the Humean and Nietzschean influences into a philosophical structure that separates the basic practically necessary features of human social life, such as the proto virtue of truthfulness, from its culturally realized forms, which are irreducibly historical and contingent. A key feature of the overall exegetical thesis is that while Nietzsche increasingly gained explicit emphasis in Williams' work as time went on, the essential combination of stabilizing and destabilizing, naturalistic and historicist, impulses remained a constant.

Foucault traced the history of a form of testimony he labelled ‘avowal’ (aveu) – effectively a social institution of testimony that counts, necessarily, as true. Looking to the present, I will focus on two institutions of testimony, each of which forms part of a system of procedures of criminal justice – one in the U.K. and the other in the U.S. – and I will analyse them as present-day institutional constructions of avowal. Each practice involves a highly problematic degree of testimonial extraction under unequal power, one ostensibly a technique of rehabilitation, the other ostensibly a technique of investigation. I will tentatively suggest that forms of avowal have a necessary role to play in our interpersonal and institutional lives, but that avowal’s obvious inherent tendency to assume abusive forms means it should be a permanent focus of suspicion, regulation, and ground-up critique.

I start by acquainting the reader with key themes from my 2007 book, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, sketching the background of British academic culture from which it grew. Moving swiftly into the present, and to the social context of the U.S., I then offer some new thoughts concerning institutional epistemic vices and explore, in particular, one important form of institutionalized epistemic vice that is exemplified by a standardly recommended police procedure for interrogating suspects.

Bernard Williams’ philosophy is shaped by a distinctive and abiding interest in the borderlands between Philosophy and History. He famously considers moral philosophy, and particularly moral theory, to over‐step the border that marks the real ‘limits’ of the discipline, and in his later work he explicitly advances the idea of doing ‘impure’ philosophy, by which he meant philosophy that mixed itself with history. By examining the complex impression left on Williams’ historical self‐consciousness by his engagements with two very different figures in the history of philosophy, namely Descartes and Wittgenstein, I will explore a number of ways in which philosophy and history are closely intertwined for Williams. This will draw out the positive vision he modelled for us of ‘impure’ philosophy—a philosophical style he took to contribute to nurturing philosophy as a humanistic discipline.

My overarching purpose is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. I set about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams' diagnostic engagement with scepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. I then develop three key aspects of Edward Craig's ‘practical explication' of the concept of knowledge so that they may be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical antisceptical impetus. In this way I aim to support and augment the socialized anti-sceptical case mounted by Williams, and so to show that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology.

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice.

The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of and a contribution to the relevant debates. Together they testify to the intellectual value of feminism as a radicalizing energy internal to philosophical inquiry. This volume will be essential reading for any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about the place of feminism in their subject.

The current literature on the value of knowledge is marred by two unwarranted presumptions, which together distort the debate and conceal what is perhaps the most basic value of knowledge, as distinct from mere true belief. These presumptions are the Synchronic Presumption, which confines philosophical attention to the present snapshot in time; and the Analytical Presumption, which has people look for the value of knowledge in some kind of warrant. Together these presumptions conceal that the value of knowledge might inhere not in a necessary condition, but simply in a property that most knowledge possesses; and, in particular, that it might inhere, as I argue it does, in a certain property of 'resilience': the tendency to survive misleading counter-evidence over time owing to the subject's being in a position to weight it against evidence already possessed.

My overarching purpose is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. I set about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams' diagnostic engagement with scepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. I then develop three key aspects of Edward Craig's ‘practical explication' of the concept of knowledge so that they may be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical antisceptical impetus. In this way I aim to support and augment the socialized anti-sceptical case mounted by Williams, and so to show that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology. Philosophical Papers Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 27-50

This chapter focuses on the different styles of moral relativism. The history of moral relativist thinking features different branches to the family tree, each representing a different impetus to relativism, and so producing a different style of moral relativist thought. At the root, however, is a broadly subjectivist parent idea that morality is at least in part the upshot of a shared way of life, and shared ways of life tend to vary markedly from culture to culture. The discussions cover the branches of moral historicism, moral reasons, moral truth, and moral plurality.

In her groundbreaking book, Epistemic Injustice, renowned moral philosopher and social epistemologist Miranda Fricker coined the term epistemic injustice to draw attention to the pervasive impact of epistemic oppression on marginalized social groups. Fricker’s account spurred a flurry of scholarship regarding the discriminatory impact of epistemic injustice and gave birth to a domain of philosophical inquiry that has extended far beyond the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy. In this interview, Fricker responds to questions posed by A. C. Nikolaidis and Winston C. Thompson that address the ways in which epistemic injustice intersects with education as a human endeavour and social institution. In doing so, Fricker reflects on her motivations in writing her book more than fifteen years ago and explicitly addresses some of the most significant contributions of the concept of epistemic injustice as a tool for analysing issues in education. She also offers insights on the purpose of education, outlines educational manifestations of epistemic injustice, and discusses the virtues that educators must exhibit and inculcate in their students in order for epistemic justice to obtain.