Sara Chan, Philosophy

My research is concerned with epistemic injustice, that is injustice that is directed at one’s capacity as a knower. Have you ever noticed that some people are taken less seriously than others because of things like accent, or gender, or race? This happens because when we’re talking to other people, we often have to make a quick judgment about how reliable they are, and because this judgment takes place in a split second, we often rely on stereotypes as a useful heuristic. 

The problem is that many stereotypes are poisoned by prejudice, which can lead to people unfairly dismissing the testimony of certain individuals. These individuals are wronged epistemically because they have not been respected as givers of knowledge, but it can also have practical consequences because preventing them from contributing to the shared pool of knowledge also prevents them from shaping the narrative—from shaping our conceptions of what is seen as good, what is seen as important, and what is seen as valuable.

My research focuses on epistemic injustice in the context of cognitive disability. Cognitive disability inspires a very particular distaste in our society. It’s quite common, for example, to hear people say they would rather die than get dementia. This is important because the idea that life with cognitive disability is not worth living has many practical implications, manifest, for example, in more permissive abortion laws for babies with Down syndrome, or policies that prioritize or de-prioritize who gets life-saving medical treatment. Caregivers of the cognitively disabled have tried to speak up on their behalf, testifying to the many ways in which they can live a good life. All too often, however, their testimony is dismissed as being “blinded by love.”

Are there good reasons for such a dismissal, or is this an instance of epistemic injustice? There is a reason “blinded by love” is a phrase, after all. In my work, I look closely at the nature of love and the norms it generates in order to determine whether it really does pressure the lover to disobey the norms of rational belief. Spoiler, I argue that it does not. In fact, I go further and argue that love can actually be transformative in helping one to see value that a disinterested observer might miss.