Thinker · TH-0297
Miranda Fricker
Miranda Fricker is a British philosopher who has taught at Birkbeck, the University of Sheffield and in New York. Her book Epistemic Injustice introduced…
Miranda Fricker is a British philosopher who has taught at Birkbeck, the University of Sheffield and in New York. Her book Epistemic Injustice introduced two influential concepts: testimonial injustice, in which a speaker's credibility is deflated because of prejudice, and hermeneutical injustice, in which a gap in shared concepts leaves someone unable to make sense of their own experience. She should not be confused with Elizabeth Fricker, who also works on testimony.
Key ideas
- Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice leads a hearer to give a speaker less credibility than they deserve.
- Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a gap in collective interpretive resources leaves people unable to understand or communicate their experience.
- Such injustices wrong people specifically in their capacity as knowers.
- The remedy includes a virtue of testimonial justice: hearers correcting for prejudice in their credibility judgements.
Major works
- The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy (2000, co-edited with Jennifer Hornsby)
- Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007)
In the conversation
- Question What is hermeneutical injustice, and how is it different from simply not being believed?
- Debate Langton is right: you can be silenced while still being allowed to speak
- Debate Testimonial injustice is a failure of knowledge, not only a failure of fairness
- Discussion Epistemic injustice, nearly two decades on: what has the idea actually changed?