Dr Lubomira Radoilska leads the Responsible Agency and Epistemic Injustice Workshop which will take place on 27 May 2022 in Sibson Lecture Theatre 2.
This Workshop is part of a research collaboration on “Epistemic Injustice, Reasons and Agency” jointly led by Veli Mitova, University of Johannesburg and Lubomira Radoilska, University of Kent and funded by a Newton Advanced Fellowship Award from the British Academy: https://epistemic-injustice-reasons-agency.weebly.com
The event is free and open to all. However, registration is required. To register and for further information, please email Dr Radoilska at L.V.Radoilska@kent.ac.uk
Workshop Programme
27 May 2022, Sibson Lecture Theatre 2, University of Kent
9.00 – 9.30: Registration and Tea/Coffee
9.30 – 9.45: Welcome and Introduction
9.45 – 11.00: Thomas Schramme, University of Liverpool. Understanding people, empathy, and hermeneutical injustice
Abstract: Hermeneutical injustice, a specific form of epistemic injustice resulting in the marginalisation of relevant social experiences, has usually been described in terms of a deficiency in understanding. More specifically, hermeneutical injustice can be analysed as the result of an insufficient performance of people’s skills to understand other persons (including themselves) and their experiences. But what does understand mean in these contexts? And what are the relevant skills that need to be engaged to successfully understand another person? In my paper, I will explore elements of understanding other people, as opposed to understanding the world. Understanding other people has a normative dimension: it requires a form of recognition of the validity of another person’s perspective. A relevant skill for achieving interpersonal understanding is empathy. This is a complex skill with multiple dimensions. I will therefore investigate empathy’s role in successfully understanding other people; a process which can contribute to the prevention of epistemic injustice.
11.15 – 12.30: Joy Zhang, University of Kent. Risk Society and Epistemic Inequality: Rising Voices from the ‘Global South’ in Global Governance
Abstract. This presentation examines a type of immaterial inequality that is often indiscernible in the public gaze yet central to our collective prospect in a world risk society: the epistemic inequality within science. Even in a so-called post-truth society where expert judgments have been stripped off their presumed authority and objectivity, science, as a systematic and methodical social production of knowledge remain essential in building resilience against natural and social uncertainties. In this sense, broadening our perspectives, widening our technological options and activating a multiplicity of contributions may seem to be a logical way forward. Yet the realpolitik of global science, as in any other field of sub-politics, persists. Fundamental issues such as what is a valid scientific question, what counts as evidence and where we should look for them remain defined by Western-dominated discourse, where alternative knowledge-ways in the Global South has been chronically suppressed. As a strategic area for securing future scientific competitiveness for many countries, the expanding field of regenerative medicine in general and experimental stem cell therapy in particular is most informative on Global South scientists’ ongoing struggle to be heard.This talk draws on the example of International Association of Neurorestoration (IANR), an international professional association mainly comprised of members from China, India, Iran, Argentina, and examines an underlying mechanism which Global South communities could use to mitigate or even overcome epistemic inequality.
12.30 – 13.30: Lunch
13.30 – 14.20: Abraham Tobi, University of Johannesburg. Hegemonic Epistemic Injustice
Abstract: When an agent suffers in their capacity as a knower, they are a victim of epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustices have been theorised. In this paper, I argue for a form of epistemic injustice I tag hegemonic epistemic injustice. This is a form of epistemic injustice where the knower is first a victim of a historical and continual form of oppression. Secondly, they internalise and appreciate the systems that harm them as a knower. This is possible because the victims of hegemonic epistemic injustice subscribe to perniciously formed hegemonic epistemic systems. This form of epistemic injustice is a valuable explanatory tool for non-standard and obscure instances of epistemic injustice where the victim a) accepts the injustice they experience and b) are even the seeming perpetrators of the injustice against themselves.
14.25 – 15.15: Lauren Ware, University of Kent. Pleasure Oppression as/or Epistemic Injustice?
Abstract. The concept of pleasure oppression has received attention in trauma education and trauma counselling, mental health awareness activism, somatics, and sexology and sex education. It has, however, received scant analysis in feminist philosophy thus far, which is surprising for at least two reasons: the gendered nature of pleasure oppression, and the relevance of pain recognition for inclusive practice with regard to disability. When it is discussed in these other disciplines and contexts, pleasure oppression is often presented in a way that makes it appear as either a form of epistemic injustice or something which looks to be distinct from but ultimately bottoms out in epistemic injustice, robbing it therefore of its social, political, and legal power to function as a novel form of oppression above and beyond epistemic injustice. In this paper, I first attempt a conceptual analysis of pleasure oppression to distinguish it from other, related forms of oppression and injustice, as well as the emotion of shame. But conceptual analysis can only go so far: for what’s at stake in this debate bears significantly on both responsibility and agency. In the second part of the paper, therefore, I examine two hypotheses regarding the policy implications arising from whether pleasure oppression is or is not a form of epistemic injustice
15.15 – 15.45: Tea/Coffee
15.45 – 16.35: Andrew Akpan, University of Johannesburg. How Algorithms Further Epistemic Injustice
Abstract: This paper provides motivations for the decolonisation of algorithms. Even though there are cases where algorithms have been useful – from medicine, to infrastructural development, to policy formulations and entertainment – algorithms however extend colonialism and harm individual and collective agency. Attempts to remedy algorithmic bias come from technical, and/ or legal frameworks and are underpinned by a sense of morality; that the design and operation of algorithms have ethical implications. I argue that algorithmic bias should be understood, in the first instance, as an epistemological problem. This epistemic approach, I argue, is what holds the greatest hope for addressing, at the root level, issues of epistemic injustice that are the cause of algorithmic bias. I identify a novel form of epistemic injustice – ‘homogeneous injustice’ – that is different from existing notions of epistemic injustice in the literature, such as testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory injustices, amongst others. Homogenous injustice provides a useful tool for theorising the injustice intrinsic in how algorithms are constructed that goes beyond their legal and moral harms.
16.40 – 17.30: Elliot Porter, University of Kent. Manic Epistemology as Moral Epistemology
Abstract: Paul Lodge (2020) highlights a stark practical challenge which people in the aftermath of a manic episode face: to what extent do we trust, seek to accommodate, relate, or rely on the manic sense of things? The memory is potent and still feels authoritative, but to acknowledge it publicly risks ridicule and perplexed looks. I begin by adding stakes to both sides of this not-quite-dilemma. Being seen to take the manic sense of things seriously risks inviting the social identity of mad person, which costs one the standing in social contexts to be an independent source of reasons, diminishing both one’s moral and epistemic agency. On the other hand, leaning away from the manic sense of things cultivates a harmful detached relationship to oneself, sometimes occasioning the tentativeness that Weiner observed (2011) and which can wholly arrest agency. Taking responsibility for the manic sense of things does not mean deference, and neither does it permit out-of-hand rejection. Rather, agents must develop a module of agency that appropriately deploys that sense of things in later life. I begin sketching this module by exploring an argument I take Plato to be making implicitly in the Phaedrus, to the effect that the knowledge we gain during manic madness can be useful in making other sorts of madness (depression) more survivable. It is specifically the sense of our own value, and the extent to which things deeply matter that is worth preserving as a bulwark against nihilistic sorts of depression. I conclude by sketching the broader veridical value of these experiences and how they can be brought to bear on overall flourishing.