Prejudicial Dyfunctions, Epistemic Practices and Priestly Formation: Anselm Jimoh and the Pursuit of Genuine Knowledge

Abstract

The seminal work of Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing 1 , has become the locus classicus in contemporary discourses in social epistemology for analysing the different ways there can be dysfunctions in our epistemic practices. Fricker explores two main ways of dysfunctions in our epistemic practices. The first occurs in testimonial transaction, wherein a speaker can have a deflated credibility from a hearer owing to prejudice on the hearer’s part. A deflated credibility can be due to a “negative-identity-prejudicial stereotype” a hearer has about a speaker. In such a situation, prejudice plays a negative role. In the history of epistemology, the debate of testimony being a source of knowledge is intractable and vexed. Although there are vigorous queries on whether testimony is an autonomous source of epistemic authority, it is nevertheless, arguably true that much of what we know is testimonially acquired; from information from books, teachers to what others tell us. But, prejudice plays a facultative role on how we accept or refute the claim of a person or an epistemic agent. For instance, if S has an ill-founded idea that P is a liar, because as at the last time S asked P if he drinks alcohol, he replied in the negative, not knowing that S had asked P, the question to test his sincerity, because about two years ago, S had seen P at a function drinking a bottle of beer, but, unknown to S that P had exchanged the contents of the alcohol with a non-alcoholic substance earlier because there were no glass cups around. Then, S concluded that P is a liar on that basis. While S has grounds to believe P is telling a lie and so concludes that P is a liar, S’s claim for P is ill-founded. In such a situation, S can become prejudiced to whatever P says. This can be a prejudice that deflates S’s degree of credibility for P. Prejudice, therefore, can block the flow of knowledge and weaken the chances for achieving truth. Prejudice can manifest itself in varied ways. Fricker calls this kind of situation where prejudice shrinks a hearer’s credibility, testimonial injustice.