In this chapter, I explore three ways our epistemic relationships with ourselves can be damaged by epistemic injustice. First, we can be blocked from a proper understanding of ourselves by conflicts between our own experiences and a dominant narrative. Jennifer Lackey has argued that extreme examples of this conflict can violate our “right to be known.” Second, continued denial of one’s own experiences by the larger culture can undermine self-trust. The central importance of self-trust can be appreciated through Keith Lehrer’s concept of the keystone loop. When one loses self-trust, one loses the keystone of reasoning that enables one to trust all one’s other judgements and thereby loses one’s epistemic agency. Third, Lehrer’s views on philosophy of language illustrate how continued epistemic injustices can cut us off from our very participation in public language. This rupture brings the justification of one’s assertions in the communal language into question, because they are not appropriately connected to and grounded in one’s own experiences. In response to these three harms, I propose that we develop epistemic reparations that can restore the epistemic relationship with oneself. Epistemic reparations reflecting a right to be known can be extended to a right to be known by oneself. A focus on self-knowledge and self-evaluation can help the recipients of epistemic reparations develop Nancy Daukas’s virtue of epistemic trustworthiness. This virtue can play an essential role in epistemic reparations aimed to heal the above harms of epistemic injustice and to reestablish a state of appropriate self-trust.

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The Keystone Loop, Self-Trust, and Epistemic Reparations to Oneself

  • Sarah Wright

摘要

In this chapter, I explore three ways our epistemic relationships with ourselves can be damaged by epistemic injustice. First, we can be blocked from a proper understanding of ourselves by conflicts between our own experiences and a dominant narrative. Jennifer Lackey has argued that extreme examples of this conflict can violate our “right to be known.” Second, continued denial of one’s own experiences by the larger culture can undermine self-trust. The central importance of self-trust can be appreciated through Keith Lehrer’s concept of the keystone loop. When one loses self-trust, one loses the keystone of reasoning that enables one to trust all one’s other judgements and thereby loses one’s epistemic agency. Third, Lehrer’s views on philosophy of language illustrate how continued epistemic injustices can cut us off from our very participation in public language. This rupture brings the justification of one’s assertions in the communal language into question, because they are not appropriately connected to and grounded in one’s own experiences. In response to these three harms, I propose that we develop epistemic reparations that can restore the epistemic relationship with oneself. Epistemic reparations reflecting a right to be known can be extended to a right to be known by oneself. A focus on self-knowledge and self-evaluation can help the recipients of epistemic reparations develop Nancy Daukas’s virtue of epistemic trustworthiness. This virtue can play an essential role in epistemic reparations aimed to heal the above harms of epistemic injustice and to reestablish a state of appropriate self-trust.