Abstract

I argue that we ought to hold hearers, in testimonial exchanges, culpable for implicit bias caused undermining of speakers qua knowers. It may seem intuitive that hearers can only be held culpable if they consciously hold beliefs that motivate the undermining of speakers. Fricker takes up the issue of holding hearers culpable for holding systemic identity prejudices. She has much to say about hearers who have explicit-belief-driven sexist or racist affective reactions to minority speakers. It seems that Fricker does not consider how we should think about culpability in regards to implicit biases that hearers may hold. She does offer potential remedies for trying to have one's affective reactions to hearers match one's explicit beliefs. Moreover, I believe Jose Medina’s work on epistemic injustice may be helpful here because his thesis of cognitive minimums address communities' failure of educating knowers although he, like Fricker, takes up explicitly held beliefs rather than implicit biases/affective reactions. Drawing on both Fricker’s work on testimonial injustice and Medina’s work on epistemic injustice I suggest culpability standards for hearers. Last, I offer a brief sketch of a problem suggested by my argument namely, the problem of individuating culpable parties in relation to instances of testimonial injustice.