Ian James Kidd

Epistemic Injustice and Illness

Abstract 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 Frickers account of epistemic injustice. We detail two types of epistemic injustice, testimonial and hermeneutical, and identify the negative stereotypes and structural features of modern healthcare practices that generate them. We claim that these stereotypes and structural features render ill persons especially vulnerable to these two types of epistemic injustice. We end by proposing five avenues for further work on epistemic injustice in healthcare.

Can Illness Be Edifying

Abstract Havi Carel has recently argued that one can be ill and happy. An ill person can “positively respond” to illness by cultivating “adaptability” and “creativity”. I propose that Carels claim can be augmented by connecting it with virtue ethics. The positive responses which Carel describes are best understood as the cultivation of virtues, and this adds a significant moral aspect to coping with illness. I then defend this claim against two sets of objections and conclude that interpreting Carels phenomenology of illness within a virtue-ethical framework enriches our understanding of how illness can be edifying.

Inevitability, contingency, and epistemic humility

This paper offers an epistemological framework for the debate about whether the results of scientific enquiry are inevitable or contingent. I argue in Sections 2 and 3 that inevitabilist stances are doubly guilty of epistemic hubris--a lack of epistemic humility--and that the real question concerns the scope and strength of our contingentism. The latter stages of the paper-Sections 4 and 5-address some epistemological and historiographical worries and sketch some examples of deep contingencies to guide further debate. I conclude by affirming that the concept of epistemic humility can usefully inform critical reflection on the contingency of the sciences and the practice of history of science.

Historical Contingency and the Impact of Scientific Imperialism

In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Duprés criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and Walshs proposal is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism.In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupres criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and Walshs proposal is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism.

Why did Feyerabend Defend Astrology? Integrity, Virtue, and the Authority of Science

This paper explores the relationship between epistemic integrity, virtue, and authority by offering a virtue epistemological reading of the defences of non-scientific beliefs, practices, and traditions in the writings of Paul Feyerabend. I argue that there was a robust epistemic rationale for those defences and that it can inform contemporary reflection on the epistemic authority of the sciences. Two common explanations of the purpose of those defences are rejected as lacking textual support. A third “pluralist” reading is judged more persuasive, but found to be incomplete, owing to a failure to accommodate Feyerabend’s focus upon the integrity of scientists and the authority of science. I therefore suggest that the defences are more fully understood as defences of the epistemic integrity of scientists that take the form of critical exposures of failures by scientists to act with integrity. An appeal is made to contemporary virtue epistemology that clarifies Feyerabend’s implicit association of epistemic integrity and epistemic virtue. If so, what critics have taken to be radically “anarchistic” defences of pseudoscience are, in fact, principled defences of the epistemic integrity—and hence authority—of science

Exemplars, ethics, and illness narratives

Many people report that reading first-person narratives of the experience of illness can be morally instructive or educative. But although they are ubiquitous and typically sincere, the precise nature of such educative experiences is puzzling, for those narratives typically lack the features that modern philosophers regard as constitutive of moral reason. I argue that such puzzlement should disappear, and the morally educative power of illness narratives explained, if one distinguishes two different styles of moral reasoning: an inferentialist style that generates the puzzlement and an alternative exemplarist style that offers a compelling explanation of the morally educative power of pathographic literature.

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 specific. Some suggestions are made to counteract the effects of these factors, for instance, we suggest that physicians should participate in groups where the subjective experience of patients is explored, and learn to become more aware of their own unconscious prejudices towards psychiatric patients.

Introduction: Reappraising Paul Feyerabend

This volume is devoted to a reappraisal of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It has four aims. The first is to reassess his already well-known work from the 1960s and 1970s in light of contemporary developments in the history and philosophy of science. The second is to explore themes in his neglected later work, including recently published and previously unavailable writings. The third is to assess the contributions that Feyerabend can make to contemporary debate, on topics such as perspectivism, realism, and political philosophy of science. The fourth and final aim is to reconsider Feyerabends place within the history of philosophy of science in the light of new scholarship.

Biopiracy and the Ethics of Medical Heritage: The Case of India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library’

Medical humanities have a central role to play in combating biopiracy. Medical humanities scholars can articulate and communicate the complex structures of meaning and significance which human beings have invested in their ways of conceiving health and sickness. Such awareness of the moral significance of medical heritage is necessary to ongoing legal, political, and ethical debates regarding the status and protection of medical heritage. I use the Indian Traditional Knowledge Digital Library as a case study of the role of medical humanities in challenging biopiracy by deepening our sense of the moral value of medical heritage.

Beauty, virtue, and religious exemplars

This article explores the beauty of religious exemplars – those special persons whose conduct and comportment marks their life out as one that exemplifies a religious life. Such exemplars are consistently described as beautiful, but it is not clear how or why. I suggest that we can make sense of the aesthetic aspect of religious exemplarity by adopting a ‘virtue-centric’ theory of beauty that understands the beautiful in terms of the expression or manifestation of virtues. Religious exemplars are those who have cultivated their virtues to an advanced degree and are beautiful for that reason. Attending to the beauty of religious exemplars can enrich exemplarist virtue theory, the aesthetics of character, and our understanding of the nature of a religious life.