Depressions and Hermeneutical Injustice

APSE-CEU-IVC Talks
The Philosophy Department of the Central European University, the Institute Vienna Circle and the Unit for Applied Philosophy of Science and Epistemology (of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna) are jointly organizing a series of talks this term

Date: 19/01/2023

Time: 15h00

This talk can be followed via online platform.

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univienna.zoom.us/j/61475205762

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Abstract:

The concept of an epistemic injustice, as developed by Miranda Fricker, has become popular to describe the epistemic predicament of persons with psychiatric conditions. I argue the concept of socially-sustained hermeneutical injustices – of gaps in, or refusal to employ, interpretive resources  (a) fails to capture the structural differences between the experiential worlds of the depressed and those of other people and (b) fails to articulate the depths of the predicament of depressed persons.  Features of that predicament include (a) the fact their experiential world is radically different from that of other people, due to (b) their inability to experience certain kinds of possibility, which (c) are still accessible to other people who (d) continue to tacitly, obliviously presuppose that sense of belonging to a shared world. I end the talk by suggesting a more complicated account: the epistemic predicament of persons diagnosed with depression involve a combination of interacting phenomenological, interpersonal, and contextual obstacles.