Research

My dissertation, Krinostic Injustice, identifies a new type of epistemic injustice in which a hearer does not question a speaker’s account of a sequence of basic events but calls into question that speaker’s characterization of their experience. Krinostic injustice wrongs an agent in their capacity as a competent judge of their experience (in Ancient Greek, the verb κρῑ́νω means “to decide” or “to judge”). I argue that this form of epistemic injustice manifests in sexual assault trials, while keeping in mind its application to other contexts.

Jürgen Habermas, “How is legitimacy made possible via legality?”, trans. Linh Mac, Revus [Online first], 50 | 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/revus.9668 (German to English Translation)

“Descriptions, Articulations, and the Development of New Moral Concepts”, Syndicate Philosophy (forthcoming) 

• Invited contribution to Syndicate Philosophy​ book symposium on Matthew Congdon's Moral Articulation: On the Development of New Moral Concepts

“Two Senses of Characterization”

Both the epistemology of testimony and the literature on epistemic injustice—including extant accounts of testimonial injustice—have neglected an important, though not hard-and-fast, distinction between two kinds of testimony. I dub the first kind basic descriptions and the second characterizations. Basic descriptions are statements about observable states of affairs (or at least of what can in principle be observed) while characterizations constitute applying conceptual frameworks to things that are not directly observable in order to make sense of these observable states of affairs. 

While the word “characterization” is used ubiquitously, it remains undertheorized. In this paper, I distinguish two distinct yet mutually enforcing senses of characterization: (1) characterization as an explicit view about a concept; (2) characterization as judgment. The difference here is that while judgment can be construed as both a faculty and the product of exercising that faculty, as when a judge determines that a defendant has committed said crime, I construe characterization more narrowly, as exclusively the product of the judging process. 

Here’s the road map. In section I, I articulate my view of characterization as an explicit view about a concept. In so doing, I distinguish my view of characterization from Camp’s view of characterization, according to which characterizations are complex mental representations akin to conceptions. Section II develops a notion of characterizations as products of judgment. Section III further differentiates characterizations from basic descriptions. Finally, I conclude that this distinction between characterizations and basic descriptions is important for at least two topics in social epistemology: (i) the debate between non-reductionism and reductionism in the epistemology of testimony; and (ii) discussions of epistemic injustice.

“Testimonial Injustice and Hermeneutical Injustice: Towards a Unified Account” 

I argue that testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice should be viewed as a unified phenomenon rather than as distinct yet mutually interactive phenomena, as emphasized by scholars working on epistemic injustice (see, for example, Fricker 2007, Dotson 2012, Pohlhaus 2012, Medina 2013, Falbo 2022). I advance two claims. First, testimonial injustice is also hermeneutical whenever a hearer’s assessment of a speaker’s credibility is shaped by their preconceived understanding of how that speaker’s identity informs the content of their utterance. I note that testimonial injustice often arises in situations of conflict where the hearer and the speaker disagree on the content of the speaker’s utterance. Accordingly, a failure to understand or find intelligible what a speaker communicates might lead a hearer to discredit a speaker’s words. Second, and conversely, failing to acknowledge that a speaker speaks from knowledge—when that speaker in fact does—perpetuates the shortcomings and limitedness of a hearer’s hermeneutical framework. Thus, testimonial injustice is caused by and simultaneously exacerbates hermeneutical injustice by enabling the prejudiced hearer to maintain their ignorance. I show how what are regarded as paradigmatic cases of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice are best conceptualized as testimonial-hermeneutical injustice.

“Self-deception, General Rules, and the Impartial Spectator”

The phenomenon of self-deception is widespread. We tend to believe things we want to be true rather than things that we know are true based on an impartial examination of the evidence we possess. Contemporary discussions of self-deception usually examine the phenomenon in terms of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology. In contrast, historical accounts of the phenomenon typically tended to focus on the morality of self-deception. Adam Smith, for example, is important because he not only focuses on the morality of self-deception but also on the mechanisms behind it as well as on finding a possible remedy for it.

This paper explores the efficacy of Smith’s device of the “impartial spectator” as a solution to the problem of self-deception. Drawing from Alfred Mele’s work, I first offer a general account of self-deception. I then home in on self-deception about one’s own character as discussed by Smith. I rely on and modify an example from Iris Murdoch in which a mother-in-law projects her own issues onto her misjudgment of her daughter-in-law but does not initially realize it. I juxtapose Smith’s device of the “impartial spectator” with Mele’s “impartial observer test,” both of which I take to be potential solutions to the problem of self-deception. 

I argue that the impartial spectator is best construed as a way of representing one’s ability for self-criticism and criticism of others that is relatively independent of the judgments of actual spectators in one’s own society. Moreover, adopting the perspective of the “impartial spectator” does not amount to adopting “the view from nowhere” that is not attached to any particular observer. Neither is it about completely getting rid of one’s biases. Rather, it is about being aware of how one’s motivations, desires, and emotions might prejudice one’s perceptions and judgments and attempting to mitigate their influence.

“A Critique of Arthur Ripstein’s Account of Kant’s Position on the Right to Revolution”

In Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein argues that Kant rejects the right to revolution but allows the overthrowing of barbarous regimes like Nazi Germany. Since Hitler’s regime is a condition of barbaric violence without laws, creating a state out of this condition is not revolution; it is merely the creation of a state where there was none. In this paper, I argue that Ripstein’s argument is unfaithful to Kant’s own account, which leaves open the question of whether there is “a right to revolt” against barbarous regimes such as Nazi Germany or as Ripstein puts it, a right to create a state where there was none. I argue that Ripstein’s response to this question is indefensible. The distinction between barbarism and despotism—when applied to the case of Nazi Germany—appears not to be a categorial distinction but a distinction in terms of degree, and for this reason, fails to demonstrate why Nazi laws should not be counted as laws. Even if Ripstein responds to this objection by discrediting the validity of Nazi Germany’s legal system as a whole by appealing to Lon Fuller’s “internal morality of law,” he would still not succeed. In the positive thesis, I sketch out what a Kantian response to the problem of Nazism might look like. I suggest that a Kantian response would entail an ethical duty on the part of citizens to resist immoral laws.

* Papers currently out for review are not listed here.

Commentary on Jürgen Habermas, “How is legitimacy made possible via legality?”, trans. Linh Mac, Revus [Online first], 50 | 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/revus.9668