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Testimonial injustice and prescriptive credibility deficits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Wade Munroe
Wade Munroe*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
*
* Email: wemunroe@indiana.edu
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Abstract

In light of recent social psychological literature, I expand Miranda Fricker’s important notion of testimonial injustice. A fair portion of Fricker’s account rests on an older paradigm of stereotype and prejudice. Given recent empirical work, I argue for what I dub prescriptive credibility deficits in which a backlash effect leads to the assignment of a diminished level of credibility to persons who act in counter-stereotypic manners, thereby flouting prescriptive stereotypes. The notion of a prescriptive credibility deficit is not merely an interesting conceptual addendum that can be appended to Fricker’s theory without need for further emendation. I develop the wider implications of prescriptive credibility deficits and argue that they pose a challenge to Fricker’s conception of (1) the function of credibility assignments in conversational exchange and (2) how a virtuous listener should respond to the potential threat of a prejudicial stereotype affecting her credibility assignments.

Keywords

Epistemic injusticetestimonial injusticecredibility deficitprejudice and stereotypeprescriptive stereotypeMiranda Fricker
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , December 2016 , pp. 924 - 947
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

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