Prof. Joseph Shieber: "Marginalized Groups and Epistemic Injustice: Can Virtue Epistemology Help?"

Many of those interested in ameliorative epistemology -- the branch of philosophy that seeks to use epistemology to improve our human situation -- embrace virtue epistemology. Virtue epistemology involves the idea that we should appeal to talk of virtues to explain concepts like knowledge or justification. In this talk, Prof. Shieber will suggest that we should be skeptical about adopting virtue epistemology. He will focus specifically on the lack of usefulness of virtue epistemology in solving problems related to epistemic injustice -- disadvantages in knowledge, justification, or understanding suffered by members of traditionally disempowered groups.