Epistemically unjust disagreements: A study in non-ideal epistemology

The literature on the epistemology of disagreement aims to answer the question of how disagreeing agents should respond to an epistemic disagreement. Towards this aim, epistemologists of disagreement standardly focus on idealized cases in which the epistemically irrelevant factors are overlooked, such as race, skin color, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. of the disagreeing agents to find the epistemically appropriate response, the response governed by the appropriate rational norms. This thesis aims to draw attention to the fact that standard approaches to the epistemology of disagreement fail to acknowledge the inextricably social character of disagreement. Epistemology of disagreement as a sub-branch of social epistemology is a discipline in which the intersubjective relationships are at the core of the knowledge validation processes. This means that non-ideal dimensions of social relationships have an effect on our epistemic considerations. To be able to show this, this thesis focuses on the misevaluations that are made by the disagreeing agents regarding each other's and their own epistemic abilities as a result of some identity prejudices and/or social norms and traditions. It will be argued that agents' underestimation or overestimation of theirs and each other's epistemic abilities as a result of prejudices creates a status injustice, which causes social, practical, moral, political as well as epistemic harms. In order to prevent status injustice and to respond to a disagreement appropriately, this thesis suggests that either moral norms together with rational norms, or an irreducibly intersubjective conception of rationality, should be adopted. Keywords: Epistemic disagreement, epistemic injustice, epistemic status, moral norms, rational norms, status injustice