Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

ABSTRACT:

Contextualist treatments of clashes of intuitions can allow that two apparently conflicting claims can both be true. But making true claims is far from the only thing that matters—there are often substantive normative questions about what contextual parameters are appropriate to a given conversational situation. This paper foregrounds the importance of the social power to set contextual standards and how it relates to injustice and oppression, introducing a phenomenon I call “contextual injustice,” which has to do with the unjust manipulation of conversational parameters in context-sensitive discourse. My central example applies contextualism about knowledge ascriptions to questions about knowledge regarding sexual assault allegations, but I will also discuss parallel dynamics in other examples of context-sensitive language involving politically significant terms, including gender terms. The discussion further illustrates some of the deep connections between language, epistemology, and social justice.