Healthcare Practice, Epistemic Injustice, and Naturalism

Epistemic Injustice and Illness

This article analyses the phenomenon of epistemic injustice within contemporary healthcare. We begin by detailing the persistent complaints patients make about their testimonial frustration and hermeneutical marginalization, and the negative impact this has on their care. We offer an epistemic analysis of this problem using Miranda Fricker's account of epistemic injustice. We detail two types o...

Methodological naturalism and epistemic internalism

Epistemic naturalism holds that the results or methodologies from the cognitive sciences are relevant to epistemology, and some have maintained that scientific methods are more compatible with externalist theories of justification than with internalist theories. But practically all discussions about naturalized epistemology are framed exclusively in terms of cognitive psychology, which is only ...

Epistemic injustice in psychiatry

It has been argued that those who suffer from medical conditions are more vulnerable to epistemic injustice (a harm done to a person in their capacity as an epistemic subject) than healthy people. This editorial claims that people with mental disorders are even more vulnerable to epistemic injustice than those with somatic illnesses. Two kinds of contributory factors are outlined, global and sp...

The Nature of Epistemic Injustice

Epistemic injustice and the mental health service user.

John Rawles (2004, p. 230) famously asserted that ‘Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought’. Truth and justice, he argued, are not to be compromised, and laws and institutions must be abolished or reformed if found to be unjust. Nevertheless, justice tends not to be the first principle of appeal or consideration in ethical deliberations in mental he...