We know a lot of things. Knowledge comes to us in various forms. Knowledge might come to us through perception, through memory, through reason, or through someone’s testimony. You might know that it is six o'clock because the clock in the walls says so. You know that your friend is sick because she tells you so. Knowledge requires us to have a belief in something. You cannot know something without having a belief. To know that it is six o'clock, you have to first believe that it is six o'clock.

A plausible theory in epistemology (the branch of philosophy that deals with theory of knowledge) is called JTB theory, which states the following: Knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). You have a belief, you have some justification for the belief, and then when the justified belief is true, voila! You now know it. Let us think of it in terms of an earlier example: You believe that it is six o'clock. You are justified in believing so because it has almost always been the case that the clock shows the accurate time, and if it is actually true that it is six o'clock, you can say: I know that it is six o’clock. It seems that the beliefs we hold are more intimate to us than the knowledge we possess. We can believe in a proposition P, and yet we might not be justified in believing so, and that means we do not know that P is true.

For example, I might believe that it is six o'clock, but if it turns out that the clock is unreliable, I might not know that it is six o'clock. There is an entire separate debate on what counts as justification, whether justified true belief always guarantees knowledge, and so on. But today, we are interested in exploring something else. Does our social status and structure determine what we know, and how much do we contribute to creating knowledge?

There is a host of emerging literature on what philosophers call “epistemic injustice” - a form of social injustice related to knowledge, its production, and access to it. Miranda Fricker’s seminal work on epistemic injustice, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, defines it as a form of injustice where someone is disadvantaged in their capacity as a knower. A victim of epistemic injustice is treated unfairly in the process of knowledge production, sharing or receiving. Fricker classifies such injustice in two forms: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice.

Testimonial injustice happens when testimony of a person is not given credibility because of their identity. Imagine a brown person in a court full of white juries. If a white jury listens to the testimony of the brown person, and feels that they cannot trust them, not because of what they are saying, but because of what their identity is – they are disadvantaged in contributing to knowledge. They have beliefs, and they are justified beliefs, and yet they are blocked from transmitting the knowledge because of an inherent bias in the jury.

Imagine your friend falls sick, and yet none of her friends trust her. She knows that she is sick. And yet, all of her friends do not want to give her the status of a knower by not trusting her. Think of a woman named Amanda who is being harassed by her boss at work. When she reports it to the HR manager, the HR manager repeatedly asks her leading questions like, “Are you sure he is harassing you?” The HR manager is devaluing Amanda's belief in its capacity as knowledge. It is unjust.

Then there is hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice is when people cannot make sense of their social experiences because they do not have any resources or conceptual tools available to them. For example, before the concept of postpartum depression existed, mothers felt overwhelming sadness after the birth of their child but did not have any concepts to describe it. It is unjust because the knower is regarded as unintelligible when at no fault of their own. This seems structural yet unintentional.

Doston, in her paper “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing”, argues that such injustice does not always have to be unintentional. She introduces the idea of “willful hermeneutical ignorance,” where a dominant group can actively avoid understanding the marginalized perspectives because doing so would harm their standing.

Think of the earlier example again, let us say there is a pre-existing concept of postpartum depression. So now, women do describe their sadness, and yet the dominant group labels them unimportant, or ungrateful – as the experience of motherhood is expected to be joyful. Doston argues in the second case that it is not just a structural gap, but that the injustice in identifying oppressed groups as ones capable of knowledge production, and sharing comes from the willful ignorance from the male dominated medical institutions.

How does this analysis play out in today’s contemporary society, and especially in universities? Are we the victims of any form of epistemic injustice? Or, are we complicit in some ways? I think the first thing that comes to my mind is the testimonial injustice that can happen through difference in accents. If we doubt the credibility of a person based on the mark of their accent, and treat what they are saying as less worthy of being “knowledge”, we are essentially denying them their legitimate capacity of being the owner.

This can happen commonly in classrooms - all people whose mother tongue is not English are not necessarily as fluent, and they might have serious problems with pronouncing certain sounds. On the other hand, we as students might judge our professors’ expertise based on how well they can speak English. Furthermore, such injustices can manifest in our classroom discussions. Who gets to set the course of discussion in classrooms? Is it someone who can speak in English fluently and confidently, or someone who is not necessarily as fluent and confident with their speaking skills yet might have extremely good ideas?

Especially in Philosophy classes, it is thought to be of extreme importance to be able to write well-reasoned, logically flowing argumentative texts. Sometimes, students are often mocked for using “flowery language.” Granted, sometimes students do write texts that are overtly obscure - which is against perhaps the most important norm in philosophy, i.e., clarity. However, it is important to ask serious questions: is forcing you to write all of your reasons for your arguments in your thesis in a logical structured format hindering you from using other forms of expression to express your ideas? Is it an hermeneutical injustice against some students who would have expressed their ideas better had there been these tools available instead of just one way of doing philosophy? Charles Mills’s book on “The Racial Contract” is an excellent example of how even an analytical piece, with rigorous argumentation, can be done with the use of lots of symbolism, and metaphors – something that is generally disdained in a philosophy paper.

These are epistemic questions that deserved to be asked. We are often unaware that epistemic injustice is happening. It is necessary to evaluate whether the system allows us to live the world in the capacity of knowers.