TY - JOUR
T1 - Is there an epistemic advantage to being oppressed?
AU - Dror, Lidal
N1 - Funding Information:
This publication was supported by the Princeton University Library Open Access Fund. I am grateful to, audiences at Harvard University and at the 2020 Eastern APA, the participants of the 2019 Rocky Mountain Conference, the participants of the 2019 New Orleans Graduate Philosophy Conference at Tulane, and the participants of the 2019 Bay Area Feminism and Philosophy Workshop, in addition to Zachary Barber, Sanford Diehl, Caitlin Fitchett, Ed Graham, Denish Jaswal, and Bernhard Nickel, for comments and discussion on earlier versions of this paper. Particular thanks for invaluable feedback are due to Rachel Achs, Malcolm Morano, Tommie Shelby, Lucas Stanczyk, and an anonymous reviewer.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Noûs published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2023/9
Y1 - 2023/9
N2 - Do the oppressed have an epistemic advantage when it comes to knowing about the systems that oppress them? If so, what explains this advantage? In this paper, I consider whether an epistemic advantage can be derived from the oppressed's contingent tendency to have more relevant experiences and motivation than the non-oppressed; or, alternatively, whether an advantage derives from the oppressed's very lived experience, thus being in principle unavailable to the non-oppressed. I then explore the potential role of knowledge-how for explaining an epistemic advantage. Ultimately, I conclude that the oppressed tend to have a contingent advantage, while rejecting that they have one in principle, except for when their phenomenological experience has an effect on the veracity of the claims they make. This has the important upshot that privileged people are not epistemically disadvantaged in principle and are thus often blameworthy for their ignorance about oppression.
AB - Do the oppressed have an epistemic advantage when it comes to knowing about the systems that oppress them? If so, what explains this advantage? In this paper, I consider whether an epistemic advantage can be derived from the oppressed's contingent tendency to have more relevant experiences and motivation than the non-oppressed; or, alternatively, whether an advantage derives from the oppressed's very lived experience, thus being in principle unavailable to the non-oppressed. I then explore the potential role of knowledge-how for explaining an epistemic advantage. Ultimately, I conclude that the oppressed tend to have a contingent advantage, while rejecting that they have one in principle, except for when their phenomenological experience has an effect on the veracity of the claims they make. This has the important upshot that privileged people are not epistemically disadvantaged in principle and are thus often blameworthy for their ignorance about oppression.
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U2 - 10.1111/nous.12424
DO - 10.1111/nous.12424
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132444678
SN - 0029-4624
VL - 57
SP - 618
EP - 640
JO - Nous
JF - Nous
IS - 3
ER -