Is There Epistemic Justice in Imperfect World?

Epistemic injustice, drawing on Miranda Fricker, has become an influential example of injustice It is composed of several types of unfairnesses. Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice leads to an unfair assessment of someone's credibility (e.g., women or minorities being disregarded in discussions). Hermeneutical injustice refers to structural gaps in collective understanding, where certain groups are being marginalized and misunderstood (e.g., historically stigmatized groups struggling to convey experiences of discrimination). These concepts shed light on how knowledge and understanding are socially conditioned, reflecting and reinforcing inequalities.

From a sociological point of view, it would be highly relevant to define epistemic justice. Miranda Fricker tried to capture epistemic justice as being the fair treatment of individuals as knowers that would ensure their credibility and respect of their experiences, and countering biases that lead to testimonial injustice as well as addressing hermeneutical gaps that marginalize certain groups' ability to make sense of their experiences. However, in many respects Fricker’s notion of epistemic justice is negative, i.e., it stands for the absence of epistemic injustice and sensitivity towards injustice allowing us to stay clear of epistemic injustice.

Fricker’s epistemic justice seems to pose a parallel dilemma to that of a rational decision making. Decision making can proceed ideally if, and only if, the participants have shared knowledge, aims, and competence (and unlimited time). Then they can agree on optimal decisions. In the empirical part of the presentation, some examples of epistemic (in)justice in social interaction are presented. Social interaction shares the characteristics of bounded rationality so that the participants do not share the same goals, knowledge and unlimited time. If there were no external limitations, epistemic justice were easily realizable. But the sociological question is, is there epistemic justice in imperfect world? Different theoretical perspectives give different answers to what counts as epistemic justice.