Asian Epistemology Network 7th Online Meeting

The Asian Epistemology Network will host its 7th online meeting on Sunday, November 28, 2021 from 7 to 10pm (Shanghai time). 

The event is open to all but please register using the link in the right column of this page. 

1st session: Transformative Injustice

• Speaker: Kunimasa Sato (Irabaki University).
• Commentator: Emily McWilliams (Duke-Kunshan).

2nd session: Propositional Justification is Not Necessary for Doxastic Justification

• Speaker: Bada Kim (Kansas University).
• Commentator: Giacomo Melis (University of Stirling).

Kunimasa Sato (Irabaki University): Transformative Injustice

• Abstract: Since Miranda Fricker presents testimonial injustice as a wrong that undermines one’s capacity as an epistemic subject, a primary harm of testimonial injustice has been understood as epistemic objectification (as argued, e.g., by Aidan McGlynn). In brief, epistemic objectification deprives one of the ability to seek truth and renders them mere objects from which perpetrators can glean information. However, Fricker also underscores another type of primary harm: inhibiting the formation of our selves or our identities due to prejudiced exclusion from “the process by which we become who we deeply, perhaps, essentially, are” (Fricker, *Epistemic Injustice, *p. 53). It seems that this primary cannot be fully explained in light of epistemic objectification, as the undermining of identity formation does not necessarily deny the subjectivity of the victims. Rather, they are granted their subjectivity in so far as they accord with the interests of the majorities and the powerful. Gaile Pohlhaus names those who suffer such mistreatment “truncated subjects.” Although Fricker considers this type of primary harm to be as serious as epistemic objectification, it has not been closely examined in subsequent literature. A possible reason for this may be that it is not obvious why a harm that inhibits one’s self-formation can be a distinctively epistemic kind of injustice. This presentation critically extends Fricker’s argument about the inhibition of one’s self-formation to articulate a distinct form of epistemic wrong: transformative injustice. First, I argue that when one is unduly excluded from trustful conversations in a thick human relationship through persistent and systematic testimonial injustice, one can be harmed epistemic self-trust (Katherine Hawley; Jeremy Wanderer). In this case, epistemic self-trust can be defined not as mere reliance on one’s epistemic faculties but as trust in oneself as an epistemic subject, and thus, it is both epistemic and personal (e.g., K. Dormandy). Second, I demonstrate that the loss of such epistemic self-trust makes one vulnerable to constitutively and causally biased construction, and consequently, this can thwart one’s potential to shape identity as a full epistemic subject. Third, I argue that the identity as an epistemic subject is transformative in that one has the potential to change earlier interests and to neutralize epistemically bad stereotypes. Hence, a primary harm that undermines such identity as an epistemic subject in persistent and systematic testimonial injustice can be construed as transformative injustice.

Bada Kim (Kansas University): Propositional Justification is Not Necessary for Doxastic Justification

• Abstract: The claim that propositional justification is necessary for doxastic justification has been taken for granted. In this paper, I challenge this necessity claim by providing a case of a belief that is doxastically justified without propositional justification. The case reveals that a belief can be formed in a way that satisfies a range of accounts of doxastic justification in the existing literature, even though the belief is based on evidence that is insufficient to meet either of two potential standards for propositional justification. This conclusion indicates that the relationship between the two kinds of epistemic justification is more complicated than it has traditionally been thought to be and that any epistemological theories presuming the necessity claim should be reconsidered.