Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Explanatory Injustice and Epistemic Agency

  • Published:
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

What is going on when we explain someone’s belief by appeal to stereotypes associated with her gender, sexuality, race, or class? In this paper I try to motivate two claims. First, such explanations involve an overlooked form of epistemic injustice, which I call ‘explanatory injustice’. Second, the language of reasons helps us shed light on the ways in which such injustice wrongs the victim qua epistemic agent. In particular, explanatory injustice is best understood as occurring in explanations of belief through a so-called reason-why when the correct explanation in fact features a motivating reason. I reach this conclusion by arguing that such explanations are a kind of normative inversion of confabulation. Thinking in these terms helps us see both how certain reason-ascriptions empower while others disempower, and (consequently) how through them believers are robbed of agency over their beliefs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. But see Dotson (2012) for an argument that we shouldn’t understand it just as a structural phenomenon.

  2. One might think that explanatory injustice is a form of what Andrew Peet (2017) calls ‘interpretative injustice’. A paradigmatic case is when a man hears a woman’s ‘no’ as a ‘yes’, in line with the stereotype of women liking to play hard to get. But this kind of injustice is different in that its vehicle is the interpretation of utterances, rather than the explanation of belief.

  3. I use ‘wrong’ rather than ‘harm’ deliberately. If I have a racist belief about you when I am permanently stuck on a desert island, I can never harm you, but I am clearly wronging you.

  4. I won’t pretend to have an account either of causal explanation or of the ontology of causal relata. These are complex issues (see, e.g., van Fraassen 1980; Woodward 2014), but I trust that we all have enough of an intuitive grip on the concept of cause to be able to distinguish a mere cause from a rationalising one.

  5. Precisely how we want to characterise what happened here is a delicate matter. (See, e.g., Davidson 2001: Essay 3.) The present point is simply that there will be plenty of obvious descriptions under which an agent did something in Indignation, but none in Draft.

  6. Some philosophers deny that reasons are causes (e.g., Dancy 2000). For arguments that the denial is ontologically too costly, see Mitova (2017: § 3.2.2).

  7. Examples include Alvarez (2010) and Dancy (2000). Some authors use ‘explanatory reasons’ instead of reason-why, but this label courts confusion. First, it misleadingly suggests that motivating reasons aren’t explanatory. And this leads to various problems in the ontology of reasons debate. (I have argued for this in Mitova 2017: § 1.2). Second, as a matter of fact, the literature vacillates in its use of ‘explanatory reason’, partly because the term is ambiguous between purely causal explanation and a rationalising one. Here, for example, is Parfit using it as a synonym of a motivating reason, instead of a reason-why: ‘When we have [a normative] reason, and we act for that reason, it becomes our motivating or explanatory reason’ (Parfit 2001: 17).

  8. ‘Correct’ here and throughout doesn’t mean ‘ideal’, but simply ‘faithful to what in fact moved the agent to act/ believe as she did’. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for requesting clarity here.

  9. This ‘favouring’ analysis of normative reasons isn’t without its opponents (e.g., Hieronymi 2005). See Mitova (2017: § 1.2.1) for why such opposition is misguided.

  10. I don’t mean to suggest that the concepts of motivating reason and reason-why will have the same extensions in the action and belief case, just that their intension is the same.

  11. The so-called basing requirement, which many accept, is the requirement that in order for your belief to be (doxastically) justified, it needs to be held for the good reasons you have for it (e.g., Neta 2002).

  12. This is meant simply as a psychological claim that is accepted by pretty much everyone. (The locus classicus is Williams 1973.)

  13. I am obviously skirting rather brashly the debate about whether pragmatic reasons can be normative reasons for belief. For arguments that they can be, see e.g., Reisner (2009).

  14. Some philosophers deny that motivating reasons need to be the ones the agent actually acted for (e.g., Broome 1997: 88). For an argument why this is both linguistically and theoretically ill motivated, see Mitova (2017: § 1.2.2).

  15. See, for instance, Newell and Shank (2014).

  16. Clearly, many reasons-irrelevant things need to obtain in order for the choice to be made. (You need to have a head, for starters.) As John Mackie’s hunt for the INUS condition has taught us, causal explanation, especially of the kind we are after here, is a very tricky matter. (See Mackie 1965, and for an example of a critique Jackson 1982.) I have already owned that I don’t feel up to settling it here (note 3).

  17. I am well aware of the barbed sound to this pronoun. One of the important lessons of recent work in experimental philosophy is that such intuitions can vary with culture (Weinberg et al. 2001) and gender (Buckwalter and Stich 2014).

  18. More recently, some have argued that our need for consistency is, in fact, an integral part of moral progress (e.g., Campbell and Kumar 2012; Summers 2017).

  19. We can also use such phrases to excuse people. Although not disempowering, such excuses still help support the larger point here: they work only insofar as they deny the actor agency over her action.

  20. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helpfully pressing me on this point.

  21. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.

  22. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point in the context of the example in § 4.2.

  23. Which is not to say, of course, that the corresponding injustice is the only one worth combatting, nor that if we eradicated it, other injustices would disappear.

  24. I am being deliberately non-committal here. My intuition is that ‘arational’ is the right label whenever a reason-why is the sole explanation. But staking this claim for belief would, I think, commit me to a side in the evidentialism-pragmatism debate, of which I promised to steer clear (see note 13).

  25. Thanks to an anonymous referee for the suggestion.

  26. It should be noted, though, that explanatory injustice is probably one of the drivers of white ignorance (Mills 2007) and other forms of wilful hermeneutical ignorance (Pohlhaus 2012).

  27. In order not to overcomplicate things, I am happy that ‘silencing’ here is heard in the non-technical sense. But, of course, what goes on is also technical silencing. See, e.g., Dotson (2011).

  28. This is to distinguish it from cases, like Tom Robinson’s, where the testifier’s sincerity, rather than competence, is doubted. For a persuasive argument that these should be treated as different kinds of injustice, see McGlynn (2019).

  29. Admittedly, thigs are not as simple as I am presenting them here. (Thanks to an anonymous reviewer.) In particular, I am assuming that reasons are more basic to normativity than goods. And this is, of course, a contentious issue, and certainly not one that I can settle here. Hopefully, the unconvinced will at least accept that my account has the first advantage I claim it does.

References

  • Alvarez M (2010) Kinds of reasons: an essay in the philosophy of action. Oxford University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Anscombe GE (1976) Intention (2nd edition, repr.). Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Broome J (1997) Reasons and motivation. Aristotelian Society, Suppl 77:131–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buckwalter W, Stich S (2014) Gender and philosophical intuition. In: Knobe J, Nichols S (eds) Experimental philosophy, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 307–346

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell R, Kumar V (2012) Moral reasoning on the ground. Ethics 122(2):273–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dancy J (2000) Practical reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson D (2001) Essays on actions and events, 2nd edn. Clarendon, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dotson K (2011) Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing. Hypatia 26(2):236–257

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dotson K (2012) A cautionary tale: on limiting epistemic oppression. Front J Women Stud 1:24–47

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Festinger L (1956) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • Fricker M (2007) Epsitemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hieronymi P (2005) The wrong kind of reason. J Philos 102(9):437–457

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson F (1982) Review of the nature of causation by miles brand. J Symb Log 47(2):470–473

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mackie JL (1965) Causes and conditions. Am Philos Q 2(4):245–264

    Google Scholar 

  • McGlynn A (2019) Epistemic objectification as the primary harm of testimonial injustice. Episteme:1–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2019.9

  • Mills C (2007) White ignorance. In: Sullivan S, Tuana N (eds) Race and epistemologies of ignorance. State Iniversity of New York Press, Albany

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitova V (2017) Believable Evidence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Neta R (2002) S knows that P. Nous 36(4):663–681

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newell BR, Shanks DR (2014) Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review. Behav Brain Sci 37 (1):1–19

  • Nisbett RE, Wilson TD (1977) Telling more than we can know: verbal reports on mental processes. Psychol Rev 84:231–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parfit D (2001) Rationality and reasons. In: Dan E et al (eds) Exploring practical philosophy. Ashgate, Burlington, pp 17–39

    Google Scholar 

  • Peet A (2017) Epistemic injustice in utterance interpretation. Synthese 194(9):3421–3443

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pohlhaus G (2012) Relational knowing and epistemic injustice: toward a theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance. Hypatia 27(4):715–735

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reisner A (2009) The possibility of pragmatic reasons for belief and the wrong kind of reasons problem. Philos Stud 145(2):257–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riggs W (2012) Culpability for epistemic injustice: deontic or Aretetic? Soc Epistemol 26(2):149–162

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Summers JS (2017) Post hoc ergo propter hoc: some benefits of rationalization. Philosophical Explorations 20(sup1):21–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2017.1287292

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Fraassen B (1980) The scientific image. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weinberg J, Nichols S, Stich S (2001) Normativity and epistemic intuitions. Philos Top 29:429–460

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams B (1973) Deciding to believe. In: Williams B (ed) Problems of the self. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Woodward J (2014) Scientific Explanation. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/scientific-explanation/

Download references

Acknowledgments

Huge thanks to Miloud Belkoniene, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, and Robin McKenna, for really helpful comments on earlier drafts. Many thanks for their feedback on related talks, to my audiences at Between Belief and Ethics Workshop (Cologne 2019), Epistemic Injustice, Reasons and Agency Workshop (Johannesburg 2019), the 24th World Congress of Philosophy (Beijing 2018), Epistemic and Practical Rationality Workshop (Fribourg 2018), and Rhodes Philosophy Graduate Day (Rhodes University 2017). Thanks to the British Academy Advanced Newton Fellowship NAFR1180082 for their financial support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Johannesburg, 2006, South Africa

    Veli Mitova

Authors
  1. Veli Mitova
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Veli Mitova.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mitova, V. Explanatory Injustice and Epistemic Agency. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23, 707–722 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10094-z

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10094-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation