Moral Responsibility For Hermeneutical Injustice

Epistemic injustice is a form of phenomenon of injustice in the field of cognition.It was put forward by the feminist epistemological philosopher Miranda Fricker.There are two important forms of epistemic injustice: testimony injustice and hermeneutical injustice.Testimonial injustice is injustice related to the degree to which people’s words are trusted.Testimonial injustice occurs when something someone says is ignored or disbelieved because of the speaker’s identity.Hermeneutical injustice has to do with how people understand their lives.Hermeneutical injustice occurs when someone’s experiences are not properly understood by oneself and by others,and when that incomprehension is because such experiences do not fit into any concept known to the other or anyone else.In this essay,my argument focuses primarily on hermeneutical injustice,and more precisely,on the question of the moral responsibility of agents in hermeneutical injustice.The question I discuss is: Are agents in hermeneutical injustice still morally responsible for their actions in case that they do not understand their experiences? In general,if an agent is morally responsible,the agent must know at least something about their actions.This suggests a view of the cognitive condition of moral responsibility: a person is blameworthy for the benighting act only if they believe that the act is wrong or they are blameworthy for their ignorance about this.(Robichaud& Wieland,2017)We can find that agents in hermeneutical injustice do not meet this cognitive condition because they lack awareness of their actions.Therefore,if we accept this cognitive condition of moral responsibility,the agents in hermeneutical injustice seem not to be morally responsible for their actions,that is,they are not blameworthy.This conclusion goes against another intuition that the wrongdoer is blameworthy,and agents in hermeneutical injustice indeed do something wrong.I propose a theory to reconcile the conflict.I construct a general model about cognitive conditions of moral responsibility and explain why the general model cannot deal with the problem of moral responsibility in hermeneutical injustice.Then,I reconstruct a modified version,adding a consideration of the cognitive attitude of the agent.I argue that even if ignorance in hermeneutical injustice can exculpate moral responsibility for agents,this exculpation is not unconditional.I also argue that there is a cognitive attitude that can serve as a necessary condition for the exculpation of moral responsibility in the situation of ignorance.This cognitive attitude complements the theory of cognitive conditions of moral responsibility,and raises the moral requirement of listening to the moral agents at the same time.