Care and injustice

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
Brunella Casalini
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Care Ethics ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Care And Justice

After briefly reconstructing the debate concerning care and justice, this article highlights the difference between liberal ontology and epistemology, and the epistemic and ontological assumptions of care ethics. It explores the importance of social epistemology and epistemic injustice for care ethics and links care ethics to an ecological and horizontal epistemology. It justifies forgoing the construction of a systematic theory of justice à la Rawls, endorses an idea of justice that gives priority to injustice and sees democracy as a precondition for a caring society.

Testimonial Smothering and Domestic Violence Disclosure in Clinical Contexts

Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jack Warman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Health Sciences ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
Domestic Violence And Abuse

Abstract Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are at last coming to be recognised as serious global public health problems. Nevertheless, many women with personal histories of DVA decline to disclose them to healthcare practitioners. In the health sciences, recent empirical work has identified many factors that impede DVA disclosure, known as barriers to disclosure. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology on testimonial silencing, we might wonder why so many people withhold their testimony and whether there is some kind of epistemic injustice afoot here. In this paper, I offer some philosophical reflections on DVA disclosure in clinical contexts and the associated barriers to disclosure. I argue that women with personal histories of DVA are vulnerable to a certain form of testimonial injustice in clinical contexts, namely, testimonial smothering, and that this may help to explain why they withhold that testimony. It is my contention that this can help explain the low rates of DVA disclosure by patients to healthcare practitioners.

Expertise as a Form of Knowledge: A Response to Quast

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-442
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Epistemic Standard ◽  
Closed Systems ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Christian Quast has presented what he describes as a ‘role-functional’ account of expertise as a form of knowledge that purports to take into account prior discussions within recent analytic social epistemology and allied fields. I argue that his scrupulousness results in a confused version of the role-functional account, which I try to remedy by presenting a ‘clean’ account that clearly distinguishes such an account from what Quast calls a ‘competence-driven’ one. The key point of my account is that ‘competence’ pertains to knowledge in closed systems and ‘expertise’ in open systems. I observe that the invocation of ‘reliability’ as an epistemic standard simply serves to confuse the difference between the competence-driven and role-functional accounts.

scholarly journals EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE IN THE SPACE OF REASONS

Episteme ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Congdon
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Space Of Reasons ◽  
Miranda Fricker ◽  
Epistemological Framework

AbstractIn this paper, I make explicit some implicit commitments to realism and conceptualism in recent work in social epistemology exemplified by Miranda Fricker and Charles Mills. I offer a survey of recent writings at the intersection of social epistemology, feminism, and critical race theory, showing that commitments to realism and conceptualism are at once implied yet undertheorized in the existing literature. I go on to offer an explicit defense of these commitments by drawing from the epistemological framework of John McDowell, demonstrating the relevance of the metaphor of the “space of reasons” for theorizing and criticizing instances of epistemic injustice. I then point out how McDowell’s own view requires expansion and revision in light of Mills' concept of “epistemologies of ignorance.” I conclude that, when their strengths are used to make up for each others' weaknesses, Mills and McDowell’s positions mutually reinforce one another, producing a powerful model for theorizing instances of systematic ignorance and false belief.

Justice and the Difference Principle

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Copp
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
The People ◽  
Moral Learning ◽  
The Difference

In his book, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls suggests that a theory of social justice is satisfactory only if it has both of two characteristics (pp. 182, 6). First, it must be capable of serving as the “public moral basis of society” (p. 182). That is, it must be reasonable to suppose that it would be strictly complied with while serving as the public conception of justice in a society which is in favourable circumstances—a society in which the people would strictly comply with any public conception of justice if the strains of commitment to it were not too great, given the general facts of psychology and moral learning (p. 145, cf. pp. 8, 175-83, 245-6). Second, a theory of justice must characterize “ … our considered judgements in reflective equilibrium” (p. 182).

PROCEDURAL VERSUS SUBSTANTIVE JUSTICE: RAWLS AND NOZICK

2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lewis Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Liberal Societies ◽  
Substantive Justice ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Just Society

This paper critically assesses the “procedural” accounts of political justice set forth by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) and Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). I argue that the areas of agreement between Rawls and Nozick are more significant than their disagreements. Even though Nozick offers trenchant criticisms of Rawls's argument for economic redistribution (the “difference principle”), Nozick's own economic libertarianism is undermined by his “principle of rectification,” which he offers as a possible ground in practice for the application of something like the difference principle. Both Rawls's and Nozick's accounts of justice fail because of their abstraction from human nature as a ground of right. At the same time the libertarianism on which they agree in the non-economic sphere would deprive a free society of its necessary moral underpinning. Rawls and Nozick err, finally, by demanding that the policies pursued by a just society conform to theoretical formulas concocted by philosophy professors, rather than leaving room (as Lockean liberalism does) for the adjustment of policies to particular circumstances based on statesmen's prudential judgment and the consent of the governed. Particularly troubling from the perspective of a citizen seriously concerned with the advancement of justice and freedom is both thinkers' shrill denunciations of existing liberal societies for failing to conform to their particular strictures.

scholarly journals COMBINING DEMOCRATIC EQUALITY AND LUCK EGALITARIANISM

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Lars Lindblom
Keyword(s):  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Democratic Equality ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Crucial Part

The concept of responsibility plays a crucial part in the debate between proponents of democratic equality, like Rawls, and defenders of luck egalitarianism, such as Dworkin. In this paper it is argued that the two theories can be combined, and that they should be combined to achieve a theory of justice that puts personal responsibility in its proper place. The concept of justice requires two different conceptions. The two theories can be combined because they deal with different problems of justice. They ought to be combined because, first, luck egalitarianism needs a theory of background justice, and second, a theory of justice must supply an answer to the question of just individual allocations, something that is not provided by democratic equality. Democratic equality and luck egalitarianism solve each other’s problems. The combined theory will lead to allocations of goods that respect both the difference principle and the envy test.

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