Abstract
The literature on epistemic injustice currently displays a logocentric or propositional bias that excludes people with intellectual disabilities from the scope of epistemic agency and the demands of epistemic justice. This paper develops an account of epistemic agency and injustice that is inclusive of both people with and people without intellectual disabilities. I begin by specifying the hitherto undertheorized notion of epistemic agency. I develop a broader, pluralist account of epistemic agency, which relies on a conception of knowledge that accounts not only for propositional knowing, but also for other types of knowing that have been largely neglected in debates on epistemic injustice and agency. Based on this pluralist account of epistemic agency, I then show that people with intellectual disabilities qualify as epistemic agents and therefore as subjects of epistemic justice. Finally, I argue that this pluralist account of epistemic agency pushes us to revisit the current conception of epistemic injustice and to expand its taxonomy in two important ways.
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Notes
To avoid equivocation, it should be noted that the concept of epistemic agency as defined here and in the literature on epistemic injustice is to be distinguished from the concept of epistemic agency as it is found in traditional epistemology, where it refers, for example, to individuals’ capacities to form beliefs and where it is not connected to the concept of epistemic injustice.
For an exception to this logocentric focus in discussions of epistemic injustice, see Shotwell 2017.
The logocentric conception of epistemic agency can even more broadly exclude the category of people Thomas Schramme (2019) has insightfully termed ‘minority minds’, which includes people with cognitive disabilities (including intellectual disabilities) as well as psychiatrized and neurodivergent individuals.
While the incisive concept of epistemic injustice is owed to Fricker, it captures some of the power dynamics that had previously been insightfully identified and analyzed, if not as succinctly labeled, by feminist epistemologists, including black feminists (e.g., Hill Collins 1990; Crenshaw 1991) and standpoint theorists (e.g., Harding 1986; Hartsock 1983).
Though it should be noted here that the extent to which existing models of disability, which have focused mostly on physical disability, are useful to, or indeed inclusive of, people with cognitive disabilities, including ID, remains a disputed question in disability studies (see, e.g., Bigby 2019, 493; Kittay and Carlson 2010, 6; Mckenzie 2013, 370–1; Paterson 2019, 206; Stalker 2019, 159–61, 167).
Shotwell often uses the term ‘implicit understanding’ to refer to non-propositional knowing or knowledge. I choose to use the terms ‘knowing’ or ‘knowledge’ to indicate more directly the relevance of the elements thus designated to the properly epistemic realm of what we know. While I grant that implicit, non-propositional types of knowing are importantly different from explicit, propositional knowledge (as this expanded typology of knowing makes clear), I use ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge’ interchangeably for both analytical and normative reasons: because of the similar relevance of all elements thus designated to the properly epistemic realm of what we know, and because to reserve the term ‘knowledge’ solely for propositional knowledge reinforces exclusionary biases, as argued below. I also wish to acknowledge, as Shotwell (Shotwell 2014) does, the significant literature in feminist philosophy that has long recognized both the body and emotions as valuable epistemic resources.
Indeed, this is in general true for privileged/dominant groups with regard to many experiences of oppressed/non-dominant groups, and vice versa. Members of each group might share the propositional knowledge that corresponds to, say, heteronormativity or white supremacy, while having diametrically opposed embodied and affective experiences and knowings of these systems of oppression/domination (e.g., homosexual vs heterosexual attraction, or utter discomfort vs utter comfort in all-white spaces).
While arrived at in a different theoretical context, there is a sense in which this third component of my proposed account of epistemic agency could be framed as providing, in the more specific realm of epistemic agency, a mirror or positive counterpart (focusing on (epistemic) agency rather than (physical) disability) to those disability models that variously highlight the multidimensional and interactive nature of processes of disablement that involve similar contributing factors. Without going into an extensive survey or exegesis of existing taxonomies, one might think of the social model, the ICF, critical realism, and other interactive models (see, e.g., Barnes 2019, Bickenbach 2019, Boardman et al. 2014, Brady et al. 2016, Brosco 2010, Brunner 2019, Fougeyrollas and Beauregard 2001, Hacking 1999, Harris 2010, Mckenzie 2013, Ogletree et al. 2011, Oliver 1990, UPIAS 1976, Verbrugge and Jette 1994, Watson 2019, WHO 2001).
Or, indeed, whether we are human or non-human animals. I view it as a welcome implication of my account of epistemic agency that (at least some) non-human animals qualify as epistemic agents (e.g., to the extent that they have practical epistemic agency and are able to communicate non-verbally). Note that pointing out that members of these different types of group (people with and without ID as well as non-human animals) variously qualify as epistemic agents on my pluralist account does not imply that their respective experiences, needs, or statuses with regard to other questions are the same. These groups are both internally and externally heterogeneous and highlighting a common feature they share need not entail drawing further comparisons.
As mentioned above, the mainstream distinction between knowing-how (practical knowing) and knowing-that (propositional knowing) is well-known. Moreover, tacit knowing captures something similar to another established notion, called the common ground (Stalnaker 2002; Haslanger 2012; Stanley 2015). Finally, in addition to feminist, critical race, disability, and Indigenous theorists who have long emphasized the role of the body and emotions in the production and acquisition of knowledge, one might also point to the recent literature on transformative experience (Paul 2014), which often uses examples that rely on embodied and affective forms of experiential knowing (embodied and affective knowing), like becoming a vampire, being pregnant, or tasting a new kind of fruit.
Recall that my focus here is on people with severe to profound ID. It is clear that some people with milder types of ID or cognitive disability (e.g., certain people with milder forms of Down Syndrome or of Alzheimer’s) can and do also exercise propositional epistemic agency.
Due to space limitations, I include only one concrete illustration below, but for other examples, see, e.g., Ogletree et al. 2011 and Vorhaus 2015. As noted above, people with severe to profound ID are a heterogeneous group who nonetheless share a common feature relevant for the purposes of theorizing their epistemic agency, namely that they do not communicate through articulated speech.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this worry.
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Acknowledgments
Previous versions of parts of this paper were presented at the Canadian Philosophical Association (Montreal, 2018), at a work-in-progress session in the Philosophy Department at the Université du Québec à Montréal (Montreal, 2018), at a Society for Analytical Feminism session at the Central meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Denver, 2019), and at the SWIP-UK annual conference on Epistemic Injustice, Reasons, and Agency at the University of Kent (Canterbury, 2019). I am thankful to audiences at these events for the opportunity to discuss some of the ideas contained in this paper. For helpful conversations or comments, I am particularly thankful to Sonia Alarie, Matthew Andler, Cory Aragon, Magali Bessone, Bénédicte D’Anjou, Barrett Emerick, Luc Faucher, Audrey Ghali-Lachapelle, Abigail Gosselin, Robert Kopperud, Kimberly Lanthier, Stephen Masson, José Medina, Veli Mitova, Angie Pepper, Pierre Poirier, Lubomira Radoilska, Mauro Rossi, Thomas Schramme, Alessandra Tanesini, Léa Turbide, Kacey Warren, Camille Zimmermann, and two anonymous reviewers for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. For tremendous research assistance at different stages of this project, I am grateful to Sarah Arnaud, Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien, Simon Goyer, and Mylène Legault.
Funding
This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program. This research was also supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and by a grant from the College of Humanities (FSH) at the Université du Québec à Montréal. The current version of this paper was written while on a Faculty Fellowship at the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University.
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Catala, A. Metaepistemic Injustice and Intellectual Disability: a Pluralist Account of Epistemic Agency. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23, 755–776 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10120-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10120-0