Existing work on gaslighting ties it constitutively to facts about the intentions or prejudices of the gaslighter and/or his victim’s prior experience of epistemic injustice. I argue that the concept of gaslighting is more broadly applicable than has been appreciated: what is distinctive about gaslighting, on my account, is simply that a gaslighter confronts his victim with a certain kind of choice between rejecting his testimony and doubting her own basic epistemic competence in some domain. I thus hold that gaslighting is a purely epistemic phenomenon—not requiring any particular set of intentions or prejudices on the part of the gaslighter—and also that it can occur even in the absence of any prior experience of epistemic injustice. Appreciating the dilemmatic character of gaslighting allows us to understand its connection with a characteristic sort of epistemic harm, makes it easier to apply the concept of gaslighting in practice, and raises the possibility that we might discover its structure and the associated harm in surprising places.

现有的关于煤气灯的工作将其与煤气灯的意图或偏见和/或他的受害者先前的认知不公正经历有关的事实联系在一起。我认为煤气灯的概念比人们所理解的更广泛适用：煤气灯的独特之处在于，在我看来，煤气灯的独特之处在于，煤气灯的人在拒绝他的证词和怀疑她自己的基本认识之间做出某种选择。某个领域的能力。因此，我认为煤气灯是一种纯粹的认知现象——不需要煤气灯的任何特定意图或偏见——而且即使在没有任何先前的认知不公正经验的情况下，它也可能发生。