Typecasts, Tokens, and Spokespersons: A Case for Credibility Excess as Testimonial Injustice

Abstract

Miranda Fricker maintains that testimonial injustice is a matter of credibility deficit, not excess. In this article, I argue that this restricted characterization of testimonial injustice is too narrow. I introduce a type of identity‐prejudicial credibility excess that harms its targets qua knowers and transmitters of knowledge. I show how positive stereotyping and prejudicially inflated credibility assessments contribute to the continued epistemic oppression of marginalized knowers. In particular, I examine harms such as typecasting, compulsory representation, and epistemic exploitation and consider what hearers are obligated to do in response to these injustices. I argue that because epistemic harms to marginalized knowers also arise from prejudicially inflated assessments of their credibility, the virtue of testimonial justice must be revised to remedy them.

Social meaning in semantics and pragmatics

“…One concerns how identity considerations affect not just the referential but also the epistemic dimensions of meaning—for example, the degree of confidence or authority ascribed to speakers in a particular context. This question has already garnered considerable attention in research on testimonial injustice in philosophy, both in connection to instances of credibility deficit— the act of failing to treat someone seriously as a source of knowledge on the basis of social prejudices (Ficker, 2007)—and credibility excess— the act of ascribing inflated expertise, again based on identity‐based stereotypes (Davis, 2016). Similar issues have been at the centre of recent work on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs and pejoratives (McCready, 2019; McCready & Davis, 2017), highlighting the importance of incorporating the study of social context when modelling notions such as epistemic authority and trustworthiness in theories of meaning.…”

Epistemic Objectification as the Primary Harm of Testimonial Injustice

“…This is the approach taken by virtually all of Fricker's critics discussed in this paper. They suggest that the harm of testimonial injustice is instead that it involves a kind of othering of another person, in a sense inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's and Franz Fanon's developments of recognition theory (Pohlhaus 2014, Davis 2016and Cogdon 2017; as Pohlhaus puts it, 'the intrinsic epistemic harm of testimonial injustice is more aptly described in terms of a subject/other relation rather than the subject/object relation proposed by Fricker' (2014: 100). Elaborating on how recognition theory might be fruitfully applied here, Pohlhaus writes:…”

Philosophizing from Experience: First‐Person Accounts and Epistemic Justice

“…In other words, in being seen as a type, or as a member of a group based on a shared trait, the person is reduced through credibility excess to being a token, or a representative of the group who is seen as having authority only on issues related to the group. 32 Davis argues that this is a form of testimonial injustice.…”