An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Emily McWilliams (Visiting Research Fellow, 2023; Duke Kunshan University)
Epistemic Hijacking and The Role of Motivation in Joint Inquiry
The literature on epistemic injustice and epistemic oppression has not yet explored the role of aims and motives in social epistemic activities. Perhaps this is because it is assumed that whenever we engage in social epistemic activities like joint inquiry, we are motivated to aim at the constitutive epistemic ends of those activities. But joint inquiry is a social activity, in addition to an epistemic one. As such, it serves a broader set of social-psychological needs, beyond inquiry’s constitutive epistemic ends. For instance, when we inquire about issues that matter to us, with people who matter to us, we are often motivated to understand and express ourselves, in addition to improving our understanding of the subject of inquiry.
I will argue that attending to the role of motivation in joint inquiry reveals a class of epistemic wrongs that has not yet been explored in the literatures on epistemic injustice and epistemic oppression. I call it epistemic hijacking. It occurs, when, as a result of her marginalization, an inquirer’s epistemic agency is subverted or hijacked to serve the aims of dominant inquirers, rather than the shared aims of their joint inquiry.
Click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/86535202023
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2