Guest Speaker: "Credibility Excess as an Epistemic Injustice"

Keith Dyck (UCSB)

Friday, April 25th, 2025 (12:10–2:00 PM) | English (Building 22) Room 0314

Abstract:

According to Miranda Fricker's seminal account, an epistemic injustice is committed when, based on prejudice, a hearer ascribes to a speaker a level of credibility below what they deserve. The epistemic "silencing" of women in places like university classrooms provides one clear example of an injustice of this type. When prejudice results in credibility excess, however, Fricker contends that no epistemic injustice takes place. The over-ascription of credibility to male students in a classroom would, according to this account, involve no epistemic injustice at all. In this talk, I challenge the second of these claims. Drawing on recent work using computer simulations in social epistemology, I show how the systematic over-ascription of credibility within a dominant group can produce epistemic advantages for that group relative to other community members. Like credibility deficit, credibility excess should then be taken to involve an epistemic injustice in at least some cases.

 

Bio: 

Keith Dyck is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at UC Santa Barbara. His primary research focus is in philosophy of science and formal epistemology, with recent publications in Episteme and Philosophy of Science. His broader philosophical interests are reflected in his teaching, which includes a recent course on the philosophy of literature and an upcoming course on the philosophy of computing and artificial intelligence.