Epistemic Humility, Intuitive Cognition, and the Care of Transgender Persons
摘要
In recent years, philosophers and other scholars have attended to the asymmetries of knowledge and experience that exist within the context of health care and the practice of medicine, resulting in forms of what is known as “epistemic injustice.” This chapter first builds on the growing literature in this area by framing the denial of care for transgender persons as a form of epistemic injustice. In developing a course toward remedying this injustice, I offer a constructive intervention by arguing for the primacy of what medieval Christian philosophers called “intuitive cognition” over “abstractive cognition.” I then argue for health care providers and ethicists to cultivate the virtue of “epistemic humility,” a concept that has been discussed primarily within the context of interreligious dialogue, which is thickened and developed here within the context of health care ethics. This chapter concludes by making a case for the importance of care for gender variant persons.