Emilia Wilson, University of St. Andrew's, 'Mis-interpretive Resources and Epistemic Corrosion'

Inadequacies in our interpretive resources are epistemically and communicatively disabling; in some cases, these inadequacies can constitute (hermeneutic) injustice. Accounts of hermeneutic injustice have primarily centred on the absence of necessary resources; however, critics have highlighted cases in which the problem is a resource we do possess (‘positive hermeneutic injustice’). In this talk I examine how access to an interpretive resource may be communicative and epistemically disabling. I begin by distinguishing two sorts of interpretive resource: constituents of representations and ‘scaffolds’ which enable us to grasp said representations. I show that scaffolding resources may enable us to grasp inaccurate representations of a target: I term these mis-interpretive resources. I show that mis-interpretive resources may give rise to particularly pernicious forms of epistemic and communicative disablement, due to the apparent feeling of understanding they furnish one with. Finally, I argue that attending to scaffolding resources offers a richer understanding hermeneutic injustice, which enables us to capture key features of paradigm cases.