ABSTRACT

In this paper, I characterize a new kind of testimonial injustice (TI), a phenomenon I call ‘testimonial void’ (TV), which involves a substantial extension of the limits of the original concept put forward by Miranda Fricker. TV occurs when a speaker withholds epistemic materials on the basis of an epistemically and ethically faulty assumption that a hearer-to-be lacks the capacity to do anything epistemically relevant with them. As in testimonial smothering (TS), testimony is not proffered owing to an anticipated failure of uptake. However, unlike in cases of TS, the anticipated failure of uptake in TV is due to prejudice on the speaker’s part. By comparing TV with other forms of TI, I show that TV shares TI’s conceptual structure and harms. I argue that TV: a) shows the speaker to be a potential wrongdoer, b) reveals that TI cannot be equated with biased credibility assessments, c) entails both an indirect yet extreme form of silencing and d) the failure to extend a kind of epistemic trust implied by the enjoyment of epistemic relational equality. In addition, I explore intricate cases in which TV interacts with TS, identifying smothered instances of TV, as well as non-culpable cases of TV.

摘要

在这篇论文中，我描述了一种新的证词不公正 (TI)，我称之为“证词无效”(TV) 的现象，它涉及对米兰达·弗里克 (Miranda Fricker) 提出的原始概念的限制进行实质性扩展。当说话者基于认知和道德上错误的假设而隐瞒认知材料时，电视就会发生，即未来的听众缺乏做任何与认知相关的事情的能力。与证词扼杀 (TS) 一样，由于预期的吸收失败，不提供证词。然而，与 TS 的情况不同，电视中的预期失败是由于说话者的偏见。通过将 TV 与其他形式的 TI 进行比较，我表明 TV 共享 TI 的概念结构和危害。我认为电视：a) 表明演讲者是一个潜在的不法行为者，b) 揭示了 TI 不能等同于有偏见的可信度评估，c) 需要一种间接但极端的沉默形式，以及 d) 未能扩展一种由享受认知关系平等所暗示的认知信任。此外，我探索了电视与 TS 交互的复杂案例，确定了被扼杀的电视实例，以及无罪的电视案例。