Epistemic Oppression and Ableism in Bioethics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12147331
AutoresChristine Wieseler (0000-0001-6314-4560, California State Polytechnic University, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume35
Fascículo4
Páginas714-732
Data de publicação2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHypatia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0887-5367 • E-ISSN: 1527-2001
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/hyp.2020.38
OpenAlexW3091329160
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas23
Referências citadas58

Disabled people face obstacles to participation in epistemic communities that would be beneficial for making sense of our experiences and are susceptible to epistemic oppression. Knowledge and skills grounded in disabled people's experiences are treated as unintelligible within an ableist hermeneutic, specifically, the dominant conception of disability as lack. My discussion will focus on a few types of epistemic oppression—willful hermeneutical ignorance, epistemic exploitation, and epistemic imperialism—as they manifest in some bioethicists’ claims about and interactions with disabled people. One of the problems with the epistemic phenomena with which I am concerned is that they direct our skepticism regarding claims and justifications in the wrong direction. When we ought to be asking dominantly situated epistemic agents to justify their knowledge claims, our attention is instead directed toward skepticism regarding the accounts of marginally situated agents who are actually in a better position to know. I conclude by discussing disabled knowers’ responses to epistemic oppression, including articulating the epistemic harm they have undergone as well as ways of creating resistant ways of knowing

Episteme · Epistemic virtue · Epistemology · Harm · Ignorance · Oppression · Political science · Situated · Skepticism · Sociology · Virtue · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Ethics in medical practice · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology