The relevance of epistemic injustice to psychiatry has generated a lively literature, and only a ... more The relevance of epistemic injustice to psychiatry has generated a lively literature, and only a few critical pushbacks, a recent example being an article by Brent M. Kious, Benjamin R. Lewis, and Scott Y.H. Kim (2023). They question the usefulness of the concept of epistemic injustice to psychiatry. We would like to offer the following responses. We worry that the authors operate with a too-narrow conception of epistemic injustice, which they define as "unfairly discriminating against a person with respect to their ability to know things." At best, this includes the paradigmatic forms of what philosophers call discriminative epistemic injustice. However, this omits other importantly different kinds, such as distributive epistemic injustices, the wrongs of which involve injustices in the distribution of epistemic goods, such as credibility, which need not involve specific acts of discrimination. If we are to assess the relevance of the concept of epistemic injustice, we need a proper view of the richness of the concept. This should include acknowledging the diversity of kinds of epistemic injustice and avoiding a narrowly moral framing of their wrongs. Kious, Lewis, and Kim (2023) also complain that "allegations of psychiatric EI [epistemic injustice]" are too focused on single cases that are insufficient to motivate a generalized pessimism about psychiatric practice. A handful of isolated cases would not, of course, justify broader claims about the ubiquity of epistemic injustices. Moreover, not all negative epistemic experiences will be cases of epistemic injustice, and we, too, worry about the indiscriminate use of the concept. However, an abundance of such evidence exists insofar as there is an enormous literature testifying to negative epistemic experiences that are often interpretable as epistemic injustices-a recent survey, for example, can be found in an article by Ian James Kidd, Lucienne Spencer, and Havi Carel (2022). In addition, Kious, Lewis, and Kim overlook the complex nature of the examples they draw upon, such as Abdi Sanati and Michalis Kyratsous's case study of "J.N." (2015), whose fears about her husband's fidelity were wrongly assumed to be the product of delusion. Kious, Lewis, and Kim question whether this can be understood as ethically problematic, rather than just as a simple mistake. However, they fail to highlight the epistemic power imbalances and
The relevance of epistemic injustice to psychiatry has generated a lively literature, and only a ... more The relevance of epistemic injustice to psychiatry has generated a lively literature, and only a few critical pushbacks, a recent example being an article by Brent M. Kious, Benjamin R. Lewis, and Scott Y.H. Kim (2023). They question the usefulness of the concept of epistemic injustice to psychiatry. We would like to offer the following responses. We worry that the authors operate with a too-narrow conception of epistemic injustice, which they define as "unfairly discriminating against a person with respect to their ability to know things." At best, this includes the paradigmatic forms of what philosophers call discriminative epistemic injustice. However, this omits other importantly different kinds, such as distributive epistemic injustices, the wrongs of which involve injustices in the distribution of epistemic goods, such as credibility, which need not involve specific acts of discrimination. If we are to assess the relevance of the concept of epistemic injustice, we need a proper view of the richness of the concept. This should include acknowledging the diversity of kinds of epistemic injustice and avoiding a narrowly moral framing of their wrongs. Kious, Lewis, and Kim (2023) also complain that "allegations of psychiatric EI [epistemic injustice]" are too focused on single cases that are insufficient to motivate a generalized pessimism about psychiatric practice. A handful of isolated cases would not, of course, justify broader claims about the ubiquity of epistemic injustices. Moreover, not all negative epistemic experiences will be cases of epistemic injustice, and we, too, worry about the indiscriminate use of the concept. However, an abundance of such evidence exists insofar as there is an enormous literature testifying to negative epistemic experiences that are often interpretable as epistemic injustices-a recent survey, for example, can be found in an article by Ian James Kidd, Lucienne Spencer, and Havi Carel (2022). In addition, Kious, Lewis, and Kim overlook the complex nature of the examples they draw upon, such as Abdi Sanati and Michalis Kyratsous's case study of "J.N." (2015), whose fears about her husband's fidelity were wrongly assumed to be the product of delusion. Kious, Lewis, and Kim question whether this can be understood as ethically problematic, rather than just as a simple mistake. However, they fail to highlight the epistemic power imbalances and
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Papers by Eleanor Harris