Social Epistemology

A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy

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There’s No (Testimonial) Justice: Why Pursuit of a

Virtue is Not the Solution to Epistemic Injustice

Benjamin R. Sherman

To cite this article: Benjamin R. Sherman (2016) There’s No (Testimonial) Justice: Why Pursuit
of a Virtue is Not the Solution to Epistemic Injustice, Social Epistemology, 30:3, 229-250, DOI:
10.1080/02691728.2015.1031852

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2015.1031852

Published online: 07 Jul 2015.

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Social Epistemology, 2016
Vol. 30, No. 3, 229–250, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2015.1031852

There’s No (Testimonial) Justice: Why

Pursuit of a Virtue is Not the Solution
to Epistemic Injustice
Benjamin R. Sherman

Miranda Fricker’s book Epistemic Injustice calls attention to an important sort of

moral and intellectual wrongdoing, that of failing to give others their intellectual
due. When we fail to recognize others’ knowledge, or undervalue their beliefs and
judgments, we fail in two important respects. First, we miss out on the opportunity
to improve and refine our own sets of beliefs and judgments. Second—and more
relevant to the term “injustice”—we can deny people the intellectual respect they
deserve. Along with describing the wrong of epistemic injustice, Fricker proposes that
epistemic justice is a virtue we “can, and should, aim for in practice” (98–99). But I
argue that there are two major problems. First, it is not clear that it is reasonable to
imagine there is any such stable disposition—that is, any such virtue—as the sort of
justice she imagines. Second, even if there could be such a virtue, her theory of epis-
temic justice does not provide good guidance for avoiding epistemic injustice. While
it could give us an accurate description of the good agent, it is at best unhelpful,
and at worst counterproductive, for the ideal of the virtue of epistemic justice to
guide our thinking in practice.

Keywords: Epistemic injustice; Virtue theory; Miranda Fricker; Justice; Virtue

epistemology

Miranda Fricker’s book Epistemic Injustice calls attention to an important sort of

moral and intellectual wrongdoing, that of failing to give others their intellectual
due. When we fail to recognize others’ knowledge, or undervalue their beliefs and
judgments, we fail in two important respects. First, we miss out on the opportu-
nity improve and refine our own sets of beliefs and judgments. Second—and more

Benjamin R. Sherman is a lecturer in Philosophy at the Boston University. Correspondence to: Benjamin
R. Sherman, Philosophy, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215, USA. Email:
benrs@bu.edu

Ó 2015 Taylor & Francis

230 B. R. Sherman
relevant to the term “injustice”—we can deny people the intellectual respect they
deserve. This sort of denial is especially harmful and unjust when our patterns of
misjudgment correspond to widespread and ill-founded prejudices. In these cases,
epistemic injustice reinforces and amplifies broader social injustices.
Along with describing the wrong of epistemic injustice, Fricker proposes that
epistemic justice is a virtue we “can, and should, aim for in practice” (98–99). Her
characterizations of both the wrong and the virtue are insightful and enlightening,
but I have some misgivings about her virtue-theoretic framework. My main
contention here is that it is not a good idea for individuals to aim at developing the
virtue of epistemic justice—or at least not the kind of epistemic justice Fricker pays
most attention to, that being what she calls testimonial justice. In fact, I suggest, it is
quite likely that we would do a better job of avoiding epistemic injustice if we do
not suppose there is any such virtue as testimonial justice. There are three levels to
this argument. First, most generally—and what I will dwell on least—virtue theory
might not be a good approach to ethics or epistemology. Second, even if virtue the-
ory is correct, there is reason to doubt that testimonial justice should be included
as a virtue in the theory. Third, I will admit that it is at least possible there is such
a virtue as testimonial justice. If so, however, believing in it will hinder us more
than it helps us in achieving it. Even if it is the case that Fricker’s theory correctly
describes a real or feasibly achievable virtue, I challenge her claim that it is a virtue
we should aim for in practice.1

1. Fricker on Testimonial Justice

Testimonial injustice, as Fricker defines it, “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer
to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word” (1)—for instance, taking
someone’s testimony to have very little weight just on the basis of a blanket
presumption about their sex, race, nationality, class, and so forth. She defines the
correlative virtue, testimonial justice, such that “Its possession requires the hearer
to reliably neutralize prejudice in her judgments of credibility” (92).
Fricker describes two different ways we can achieve testimonial justice. The
ideal, perhaps, is to possess it naively, by simply never developing prejudices in the
first place (93–96). But, living in a world where identity prejudices are pervasive
and subtle, and where social structures that have been shaped by much more obvi-
ous prejudices in the past are apt to silently suggest and reinforce subtle preju-
dices, it is probably too late for most of us to have the virtue of naı̈ve testimonial
justice overall—though, of course, no one has every conceivable prejudice, so there
are many particular prejudices that we all lack naively (93).
The form of testimonial justice Fricker suggests we aim at is corrective testimo-
nial justice. If we can’t trust ourselves to be simply unprejudiced, we can try to
take our prejudices into account and correct for them:
If [someone who has evaluated another’s credibility] finds that the low credibility
judgment she has made of a speaker is due in part to prejudice, then she can correct
 Social Epistemology 231

this by revising the credibility upwards to compensate. … The guiding ideal is to neu-
tralize any negative impact of prejudice in one’s credibility judgments by compensat-
ing upwards to reach the degree of credibility that would have been given were it not
for the prejudice. (91–2)

In cases where we cannot simply “reflate” the credibility level in the judgment, Fricker
suggests that the best course of action might be to “render our judgment more vague
and more tentative,” suspend judgment altogether, or seek more evidence (92).
I more or less agree with Fricker that it is good to try to neutralize the effects
of identity prejudices on our credibility judgments. But I have two major qualms
about Fricker’s suggestion that ideals of virtue should guide our practice. First,
there might be no such virtue as testimonial justice, even if there are ways to avoid
committing the injustices most or all of the time. Second, I will argue that, even if
there is (or could be) such a virtue, it would be a bad idea to have this virtue ideal
guide our practice as hearers, given that the very biases we are trying to avoid are
likely to influence our conception of the virtue we strive for. Given our unreliabil-
ity at evaluating others’ credibility in the first place, it is not at all clear that we
can correctly recognize reliability and compare it to our own performance. While
it would be good to become someone who is habitually and characteristically dis-
posed to be just, aiming to achieve this virtue makes us, I think, less likely to actu-
ally achieve it; if there is such a virtue, our best chance to achieve it is to assume
we will never have it, and instead develop strategies for overcoming our ongoing
susceptibility to vice.

2. Virtue Theoretic Commitments and Alternative Approaches

Fricker devotes a full chapter of Epistemic Injustice (chapter 3) to defending a
virtue-theoretic approach to epistemic justice and injustice. I will not attempt to
critically analyse her argument here.2 Suffice it to say, there is widespread debate
about whether virtue-theoretic approaches to ethics and epistemology are fruitful
and defensible, and her chapter has not resolved this debate, nor do I imagine it
was intended to. I will here examine only what costs and commitments Fricker
takes on by committing herself to a virtue theory.
One need not find virtue theory at all convincing to accept Fricker’s argument
that testimonial injustice is a problem, and worthy of significant investigation.
Rival ethical and epistemological theories can recognize the wrongness of this sort
of injustice without mentioning vices at all.
Consequentialist theories may seem ill-suited to responding to epistemic
injustice. After all, they are not in a position to say that testimonial injustice is
always wrong—there could be various circumstances in which testimonial injus-
tice happens to have a good result. But they can and should recognize that
testimonial injustice is at least likely to have bad effects.3 Classical utilitarians,
for instance, would recognize that people are likely to make sub-optimal choices
if they underestimate the credibility of others, and that, when people are
232 B. R. Sherman
“harmed as knowers” through being underestimated, this is likely to impact their
happiness. When this phenomenon serves to reinforce the oppression and
marginalization of stereotyped groups, the bad effects of testimonial injustice are
almost certain to be greatly magnified.
While classical utilitarians would have to regard epistemic injustice as a bad
thing only to the extent it reduces happiness and produces suffering, many other
consequentialist theories will find some aspects of testimonial injustice to be
intrinsically bad. If accurate beliefs are valuable in themselves (as vertitistic theo-
ries of epistemology hold), then the fact that testimonial injustice involves an
inaccurate credibility judgment makes it an intrinsically bad phenomenon. If it
is inherently bad to harm someone as a knower, then patterns of epistemic
injustice will have a predictable bad effect. Other consequentialist theories, posit-
ing different values as inherently good, may describe the problem differently,
while still recognizing that something bad is happening. While there might be
situations in which epistemic injustice brings about the best results, consequen-
tialists can regard epistemic injustice, or its typical results, as harms to be
minimized overall.
Consequentialists will, of course, regard it as an empirical question how we can
best reduce epistemic injustice, or the harms resulting from it. It is an intuitively
plausible idea that the best way to minimize testimonial injustice is to have each
individual strive to be the sort of person that characteristically corrects for their
prejudices. But it is worth recalling that virtue theory started going out of vogue
in the early modern era, when a series of thinkers (including Machiavelli [1532]
1911; Mandeville 1714; Smith [1776] 2000) pointed out situations where striving
for virtue could be counterproductive. For all we know the best way to reduce
testimonial injustice is to make the populace better informed, without becoming
any more virtuous; or to feed people misinformation about marginalized groups
in ways that counteract traditional stereotypes; or encouraging more people to be
testimonially unjust towards the privileged. If we want to eliminate or reduce
testimonial injustice as a phenomenon, it is a question for social science how best
to do that.
Nor is it at all difficult to characterize the wrongness of testimonial injustice in
deontological terms. For instance, the wrongness might be characterized as
(A) Testimonial injustice involves failing to give people the credence they
deserve.
(B) Testimonial injustice violates people’s rights to equal treatment, by treating
their testimony as less trustworthy than those of privileged groups, without
the difference in treatment being grounded in salient differences between
the people evaluated.
(C) Testimonial injustice involves acting and judging in ways that we could not
endorse from behind a veil of ignorance.
… or any number of other ways. Likewise, as long as the underestimation of
others’ credibility involves some kind of irrationality, it can be characterized
 Social Epistemology 233

by what might (loosely) be called deontological theories of rationality. For

instance:
(D) Testimonial injustice will typically involve credibility judgments that do not
cohere as well as possible with our belief-sets (for instance by failing to note
that our patters of judgment about people in marginalized groups conflict
with our anti-prejudicial commitments.)
(E) Testimonial injustice will typically involve failure to respond appropriately to
the evidence available (for instance, by failing to account for evidence about
implicit bias, or by imagining sources of unreliability in the speaker that are
not supported by evidence).
… or some other such theory of rationality.
Of course, there are familiar problems with purely deontological theories of
morality and purely internalist theories of rationality: They seem to focus our
attention on the agent’s decisions, conclusions, and justifications. But there can be
cases where, through moral or epistemic bad luck, an agent underestimates a
speaker’s credibility, thereby harming them as a knower, without being in a posi-
tion to recognize it. We might balk at such an account because it focuses too
much on the unjust act, and not enough on the phenomenon of testimonial injus-
tice. Likewise, purely consequentialist accounts of morality, and purely externalist
theories of epistemology, may seem to focus too much on the effects, and take too
little notice of blameworthy decisions and reasoning. There might be cases where,
though an agent underestimates a speaker, the speaker is luckily not harmed as a
knower, or there might be cases where such theories will condone unjust acts and
careless reasoning, because it happens to produce good results on balance. Some
are drawn to virtue theories because they seem to let us have it both ways; they
define moral and epistemic goodness in terms of the agent’s virtuous characteris-
tics, but these characteristics count as virtuous because they successfully achieve
the right sort of outcomes.
But virtue theory comes with its own costs. First, virtue theory is committed to
focusing on virtues and vices—usually individual virtues and vices—as the centre
of moral life. But harms can be caused through social structures and historical
situations that cannot be improved merely by individuals becoming more virtuous
—but which can be improved through structural change without anyone becoming
more virtuous. Moreover, since virtues and vices are, by definition, stable disposi-
tions of character, virtue theory seems poorly suited to addressing the harms that
could be caused by rare, uncharacteristic acts. Someone could qualify as having the
virtue of honesty, despite lying very rarely, under unusual circumstances. Similarly,
people might qualify as epistemically just if they typically respond to others fairly,
with only rare lapses; but it is not hard to imagine a world where some groups are
marginalized, not by the populace at large being consistently unjust, but by the
marginalized groups consistently bearing the costs of the general populace’s rare
lapses.
234 B. R. Sherman
Second, virtue theory must claim that there are, in fact, virtues—that is, stable
dispositions of character that reliably succeed at achieving the right sorts of out-
comes. Where the outcomes in question are defined modestly enough, virtues look
fairly plausible: it requires no stretch of the imagination to suppose there is such a
thing as honesty, where that is the stable disposition not to lie or intentionally
mislead others. But when the outcomes in question are systematically difficult for
people to recognize or achieve, it is less clear that there is any realistically possible
human disposition that will reliably achieve them. Thus, even if virtue theory is
right, it is an open question what virtues there actually are, and which virtues we
can aim for. In the next section I will spell out the assumptions built into Fricker’s
conception of corrective testimonial justice, and in the following two sections, I
will argue that there probably is no such virtue, and, even if there is, aiming for it
does not make us more likely to achieve it.

3. Fricker’s Commitments
The most famous recent line of attack against the assumptions implicit in virtue
theory comes from situationism. Situationists argue that virtues—that is, stable
dispositions of character as they are conceived in virtue ethics—can only be real-
ized if certain assumptions about human nature are true; but those assumptions
appear to be false (Doris 1998, 2002, 2005, 2010; Harman 1999, 2000; Doris and
Stich 2007; Alfano 2013). The situationist challenge to virtue ethics has recently
been extended to virtue epistemology, arguing that virtue epistemologists also can-
not claim the kinds of virtues they discuss are realizable without making dubious
empirical assumptions (Alfano 2012, 2013, 2014; Olin and Doris 2014). Specifi-
cally, virtue theorists have traditionally assumed people have stable character traits
that are consistent across most situations, or at least that virtuous people will dis-
play virtue in all but the most extreme situations. Situationists argue, however,
that situational factors, including minor features of situations that are irrelevant to
moral or epistemic reasoning, have a much greater impact on human thought and
action than traditional virtue theory can accommodate. While situationism is hotly
contested, and many virtue theorists seek to meet the situationist challenge, Doris
and Stich argue that, given the empirical evidence, “the burden of argument has
importantly shifted: The advocate of virtue ethics can no longer simply assume
that virtue is psychologically possible” (2007, 121).
As might be expected, though, not all virtue theories are equally vulnerable to
the situationist critique. In brief, situationists argue that virtue theorists are kid-
ding themselves if they think someone disposed to be courageous—or open-
minded, or epistemically just—in one situation will be similarly disposed in all
situations. This argument attacks a deep-rooted tradition in virtue theory, but
there are branches that are willing to do away with the tradition, and accept that
we may have only dispositions-to-behave-well-in-certain-kinds-of-situations. While
 Social Epistemology 235

I am not at all sure Fricker would want to adopt this line, I see no reason she
couldn’t. So situationism is not necessarily a threat to Fricker.
But there are other aspects of testimonial justice that raise questions about its
psychological possibility:
(I) Testimonial justice is presented as the solution to the problem of epistemic
injustice, and it is a virtue Fricker claims we “can, and should, aim for in
practice” (98–99).
(II) Testimonial injustice is a form of misjudgment, an intellectual mistake, not
recognized by the agent at the time it occurs (cf. 43). So, unlike most of
the familiar moral vices, someone cannot commit testimonial injustice
knowingly. As a result, testimonial justice is constituted in part by the
capacity to notice when we have made errors in credibility judgments.
(III) Rather than taking the virtue to be whatever set of faculties or strategies
produce the right sort of judgments and corrections, Fricker proposes that
epistemic justice is guided by the following ideal: “to neutralize any nega-
tive impact of prejudice in one’s credibility judgments by compensating
upwards to reach the degree of credibility that would have been given were
it not for the prejudice” (91–92). Thus, she stipulates a particular way of
combating testimonial injustice, involving at least two steps: Identify a par-
ticular unjust credibility judgment and reflate it by the right amount.
Some argue that it does not matter whether a given virtue is psychologically
possible, since virtues can serve as purely theoretical descriptions of unattainable
ideals. But (I) forecloses this line of argument in the case of testimonial justice,
since testimonial justice is supposed to be aimed for in practice. Omniscience,
infallibility and perfect rationality can be useful and interesting ideals to discuss in
theory, but, so far as I know, no one proposes that we actually try to achieve
them. Perhaps one might suggest that, even if impossible ideals cannot be attained,
it is still worth aiming for them. But this raises a further question about
psychological possibility: If we recognize something as an unattainable ideal, is it
psychologically possible to coherently aim for it?
Perhaps this puts too much weight on the term “aim”. Perhaps the idea is that
we should approximate the ideal as much as possible. Even then, it cannot be
taken for granted that the best way to deal with a problem like testimonial injus-
tice is to strive for a contrary virtue. Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the
good—even if we are only aiming to approximate the perfect. Imagine that every-
one starts out committing testimonial injustices in 60% of cases where they evalu-
ate the credibility of a member of a marginalized group; and suppose that
everyone has two courses of action open to them: if someone tries to cultivate vir-
tue, she has a 1% chance of reducing her rate of injustice to 1%, and a 99%
chance of failing to reduce her rate of injustice at all. If she aims for a modest
improvement, she has a 99% chance of reducing her rate of injustice to 40%, and
a 1% chance of failing to reduce her rate of injustice at all. In this (admittedly
236 B. R. Sherman
artificial) example, aiming for the nearest possible approximation of virtue seems
to be, on average, a less effective way of combating testimonial injustice than giv-
ing up on the ideal and aiming for modest, but reliably achievable improvement.
Is this scenario too far-fetched to be a real worry? It might be far-fetched for
virtues like honesty and fidelity, since usually the major obstacles to becoming an
honest or faithful person are temptation or bad habits; striving for a perfect record
won’t obviously lead to worse results, in most cases, than striving for modestly
improved track record. But aspect (II) makes matters more difficult for testimonial
justice. The problems raised by (II) will be discussed in greater length in Sections
4 and 5. But for now, let me suggest a way that (II) makes it more likely that the
perfect will be the enemy of the good. We could adopt a policy of trying to notice
when prejudice affects our credibility judgments, and compensate for it; but, unless
we are very arrogant, we will probably recognize that this policy will fail some por-
tion of the time, either because we forget sometimes to ask ourselves whether we
are influenced by prejudice, or because we sometimes fail to notice the influence
of prejudice despite asking the question. Still, we might suppose (and Fricker, it
seems, must suppose) that this would be better than nothing. But (II) supposes
that people can develop a disposition to reliably notice the influence of prejudice
on their own judgments. (This need not involve supposing that anyone can be per-
fectly reliable—but Fricker’s account seems to require a high degree of reliability.)
What would be the difference between the policy of trying to detect prejudice, and
striving for the disposition to reliably detect prejudice? The former does not have
an obvious stopping point, whereas the latter does. Moreover, the stopping point
for the latter is reaching the goal of becoming someone who reliably notices their
own errors in judgment. But, from a first-person point of view, it might seem to
me that I have achieved this goal, once I have stopped noticing errors in my own
judgment. Those who are far from the goal might have as much or more evidence
of having achieved it than those who approximate it more closely.
Fricker might avoid these worries about misleading evidence if it was well-
established that some people were highly reliable at correcting their own prejudi-
cial judgments; other capacities that are sometimes regarded as epistemic virtues
(like good facial recognition, or picking up the grammar of a language) involve
reliable achievement of good judgments without conscious awareness of the evi-
dence on which they are based. In that case, while introspection might not be a
good way to determine whether someone had achieved testimonial justice, a third
party could examine whose judgment is reliable, and examine how that reliable
faculty operates and is acquired.4 This would be bad news for individuals trying to
aim for testimonial justice without the benefit of scientific findings about reliable
capacities. But at least people, as a community, could work to understand and
replicate this faculty of mistake-rectification.
But I know of no evidence establishing that anyone does possess such a capac-
ity. While Fricker suggests that there is more hope of attaining corrective testimo-
nial justice than naı̈ve testimonial justice, the reverse may be true; since most
people naively lack some prejudices, it is possible to examine what makes their
 Social Epistemology 237

judgment more reliable, and how they differ from people whose credibility
judgments are influenced by prejudice. There may be general reasons to expect
naı̈ve testimonial justice to be more common than corrective testimonial justice;
the first requires simply a reliable faculty, whereas the second requires a faculty to
reliably neutralize the errors of a different, unreliable faculty. A corrective mecha-
nism of this sort seems less likely to develop, and likely to be less developed, than
the faculty it corrects for.
For some kinds of errors, critical reflection plays, or seems to play, exactly the
sort of corrective role in question. Pre-reflectively, we are prone to fall prey to the
gambler’s fallacy and the Muller-Lyer illusion, but when we reflect critically, we
can recognize our mistakes, and correct for them. Fricker seem to take reflection
to be well-suited to play the same role in correcting for identity prejudice in credi-
bility judgments (Fricker 2007, 91). Moreover, aspect (III) suggests a particular
way of correcting for prejudices, one which involves reflective critical thinking
about the initial credibility judgment. But reflective thinking about our reactions
cannot be assumed to be more reliable than pre-reflective thinking—often reflec-
tive thought is less reliable (cf. Wilson 2002; Kornblith 2010 and 2013; Alfano
2013, Chap. 6, and 2014). I will return to this point in Section 5.

4. The Basic Problem: Comparison

Let me start with a somewhat cartoonish example. It will not decisively show there
is a problem with Fricker’s virtue theory. But it will point the way, and it will turn
out not be as ridiculous as it first appears.

The Grand Cyclops

Suppose the Grand Cyclops (GC) of a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, in an
unusually reflective mood, considers whether he possesses the virtue of testimonial
justice. He asks himself, “Do I generally and habitually give others’ testimony the
credibility it is due?” He might reflect for a while; how often does he dismiss what
he hears from others, only to later regret it? How often is he dismissive of the
opinions of lower-ranking clan members? He might be mostly satisfied with his
judgments of others’ credibility, or, upon reflection, he might realize he has some
bad habits, and should be more careful about listening carefully and seriously to
what others say. Now suppose someone asks him, “What about your reactions to
the testimony of black people, women (in traditionally male contexts), immigrants,
non-Christians, Catholics, queer people, and leftists?” “Well,” he says, “those reac-
tions are epistemically just; my credibility judgments in those cases are exactly
appropriate.”
This sounds like a bad example, because it sounds like I am expecting too
much of Fricker’s virtue theory. The theory of testimonial justice is not supposed
238 B. R. Sherman
to be a cure-all. The Grand Cyclops is vicious in many respects, and perhaps also
somewhat epistemically unlucky. A theory that names and describes a virtue is not
committed to claiming that any given one of us is capable of achieving it, let alone
that we can achieve it just by thinking about it. So we cannot expect the mere idea
of testimonial justice to somehow dispel the Grand Cyclops’s dogmatic prejudicial
beliefs.
But consider just what goes wrong in the example. The problem is not simply
that the Grand Cyclops is still prejudiced after thinking about testimonial justice;
in that case, the idea of testimonial justice would simply be unhelpful. On the con-
trary, in this case, the idea of testimonial justice is downright harmful. When the
GC considers his stereotypical views, and asks himself whether they are just, he
compares his idea of testimonial justice to his reactions to those he stereotypes,
and finds a good fit. The result is that, when he reflects on it, he sees his prejudi-
cial reactions as instances of testimonial justice; he reaffirms them, and is proud of
them.
Moreover, this self-congratulatory result is not just some quirk resulting from
his idiosyncratic beliefs. Nor is it merely a matter of confirmation bias, as the
problem is not merely that the GC is apt to fail to notice or recall evidence that
challenges his beliefs (though this is also likely to influence his thinking; cf.
Kahneman 2012, Chap. 7). The problem is that, unsurprisingly, most of his views
seem right to him, just like most of your views seem right to you. Reflecting on
testimonial justice might bring to mind a few errors, but you are likely to think
the vast majority of the time, your judgments are fair and accurate, otherwise, they
wouldn’t persist in being your judgments. Thinking about testimonial justice is
virtually certain to valorise the bulk of what you happen to believe at the moment.
If you have not already achieved testimonial justice, you are likely to make a mis-
take structurally similar to that of the Grand Cyclops; the details of your unjust
beliefs and reactions might be less monstrous than his, but still, you compare your
unjust beliefs and reactions to your idea of truth and appropriateness, and (per-
haps with a few exceptions) you find your unjust beliefs match up pretty well.
When the GC aims for testimonial justice he doesn’t merely fail to notice evidence
that his views are wrong, he presupposes that he can recognize the goal, and in
doing so presupposes that views contrary to the standard he imagines can be
regarded as epistemically unjust. And anyone else who take themselves to be able
to aim for epistemic justice will be in a similar position.
To think your present judgments are correct is not yet quite to imagine that
you currently have the virtue of testimonial justice; even if your current judgments
all seem correct to you, and thus in accordance with testimonial justice, the virtue
requires reliability, not just a passing moment of accuracy. So, if you think you
committed testimonial injustices in the recent past, you can recognize that you do
not yet have that virtue. If you have evidence of your own unreliability, that would
seem to be grounds for epistemic humility about your own present judgments. If
virtue theory is right, epistemic humility seems like a plausible virtue in its own
right. But we were imagining striving for testimonial justice, not epistemic
 Social Epistemology 239

humility. If you are aiming for testimonial justice, you are aiming for a state in
which you do not frequently notice yourself committing epistemic injustices with-
out rectifying them. But, of course, there are two ways to achieve this aim: You
could achieve testimonial justice, or you could stop noticing your uncorrected
testimonial injustices. The trouble is, since your own present judgments will always
seem correct to you, you will be unable to distinguish those two outcomes. Striv-
ing for the virtue of testimonial injustice is not inherently at odds with updating
your beliefs in the face of new evidence, but it involves aiming to achieve a state
in which new evidence will, by hypothesis, never or rarely require such changes to
your credibility judgments.
Still, this might sounds like an objection to virtue theory in general, not
Fricker’s virtue in particular. A mistaken idea about what is virtuous could always
lead someone astray. The GC thinks it is courageous to threaten and terrorize
defenceless people, and so valorises behavior we think is appalling, and perhaps
downright cowardly. The GC thinks the epistemically responsible thing to do is
avoid listening to those who want to change his views on race, gender, etc., and so
valorises an epistemic policy we think is viciously dogmatic and epistemically
irresponsible.
In fact, this sort of mistake is not a special problem for virtue theory at all, but
a problem for moral thinking in general. Any time we mistakenly think something
bad is good, our motivation to be moral could, in fact, lead us to be immoral. Vir-
tue theory differs from (some) other moral theories only in giving less specific
guidance about how to tell right from wrong. Becoming a utilitarian or Kantian
only helps us avoid these results if the theory we pick is correct (or at least never
demands we do anything that is, in fact, wrong.)
If striving for testimonial justice were no worse than striving for any other vir-
tue (or moral standard), the case of the GC would not be much of a problem. But
the case is at least somewhat worse for testimonial justice.
First, while it is always possible to have a false conception of a virtue (or some
other moral standard), one’s conception of testimonial justice is virtually guaran-
teed to match one’s own present state, and so reinforce complacency. Compare
with two closely related virtues: the moral virtue of justice, and the epistemic vir-
tue of intellectual responsibility. Neither of these virtues is constituted by reliably
recognizing errors. It is even possible that one might be morally just or epistemi-
cally responsible while believing one is not (at least on some theories of virtue.) It
is quite likely that most people take themselves to generally be fairly just and intel-
lectually responsible, but there is nothing incoherent about thinking oneself unjust
or irresponsible. Sometimes we treat others unjustly for selfish reasons, or do so
accidentally, but then fail to make reparations out of embarrassment or laziness.
(Of course, those with more demanding notions of justice might think that it
would take a heroic effort to be truly just, and might, in all awareness, fall well
short of that heroic standard.) And, even if most people think themselves generally
decently just, probably most people can think of others who are somewhat more
just—who are a little more careful and observant of the demands of fairness and
240 B. R. Sherman
dessert. If so, they can generally observe at least some difference between the ideal
of justice and their own behavior. Intellectual responsibility is a little different,
since, of course, people cannot think their beliefs are too far from being true with-
out falling afoul of Moore’s Paradox: It makes no sense to say “I believe that p,
but it is likely that p is false.” But people can recognize themselves as careless, and
so take the attitude that it is a matter of good luck that their beliefs are mostly
true. They can, again, recognize that others are more careful and scrupulous than
themselves. In both cases, they can see how, with some effort, they could more
closely approximate the ideal.
Testimonial justice, on the other hand, is a matter of avoiding certain kinds of
error. Apart from rare crisis moments that shake our entire worldview, we cannot
regard most of our beliefs as erroneous, and, if we can recognize anyone as having
more accurate judgments than our own, at a given time, this judgment must be
based on our appraisal of their conclusions—which means either we share many
of their beliefs, or we find their judgments persuasive upon learning about them,
and adopt those beliefs ourselves. I cannot coherently think someone has much
better judgment than me if I disagree with her about too many of her conclusions.
This brings me to a second difference between testimonial justice and other vir-
tues. While the literature on virtue ethics sometimes seems to assume the author
and reader both already know what is virtuous and correct, it does suggest at least
some resources for correcting mistaken conceptions of virtue. For one thing, we
can check whether our conceptions of virtue cohere with the opinions of our role
models—those we think of as wise, admirable, and flourishing. For another, a
virtue must be at least compatible with living a life that is both admirable and
worthwhile.
These ways of screening for mistakes are not foolproof. If the Grand Cyclops
takes the Grand Wizard as his role model for courage, justice, and intellectual
responsibility, there is only slim hope that his views will change as he strives for
his ill-conceived ideals. It does seem plausible (though not obvious) that if his ide-
als were different, he would flourish more than he will if he pursues his current
ideals. But that would mean living a different enough life that he probably has no
way to make the comparison.
But, again, pursuing the virtue of testimonial justice nearly guarantees that
these corrective mechanisms will fail, whereas they stand a chance of working for
other virtues. I cannot coherently take someone as a role model for epistemic jus-
tice if I disagree with many of her judgments.5 Here, again, I think we see a poten-
tial tension between epistemic responsibility and testimonial justice; if someone is
more epistemically responsible than me, or has a long track record of winning me
over when we disagree, then, insofar as I aspire to epistemic responsibility, I aspire
to being the sort of person who suspends judgment or revises my views in a situa-
tion like this.6 When I aspire to testimonial justice, on the other hand, I aspire to
being the sort of person that reliably judges credibility correctly, and so would not
need to make such revisions on my credibility judgments.7
 Social Epistemology 241

As for compatibility with the flourishing life, while I could realize my present
cowardice, injustice, or intellectual irresponsibility is a source of unhappiness in
my life, I could only recognize testimonial injustice as a source of unhappiness in
retrospect, by having already realized some of my past judgments were mistaken.
Perhaps I have missed opportunities, wasted effort, damaged potentially warm rela-
tionships, or shamed myself by underestimating others’ credibility in the past, and
this could lead me to revise some of my judgments. But, to the extent this involves
receiving new evidence about others’ credibility, it is not clear this changes my
conception of testimonial justice; rather, my own judgment is still the standard I
use to decide what is just, I have simply changed my mind about particular
credibility estimates. To the extent judgments that have caused unhappiness still
seem accurate and appropriate to me, it is unclear how I can think myself more
epistemically just for changing them.
Finally, there is one other reason my objection to testimonial justice is not
necessarily an objection to virtue theory generally: I see nothing inappropriate
about describing testimonial injustice as a vice, and striving to avoid this vice.
Doing so will not guarantee success, of course. Testimonial injustice is always a
mistake, and we don’t make mistakes on purpose, so we can easily fail to notice
when we are being vicious. But there is an important difference between aspiring
to an ideal of correct judgment and striving to avoid mistakes. Whereas my model
for correct judgment more or less has to be closely connected with my own con-
sidered views, the very process of trying to find and guard against mistakes
involves seeking gaps between my own opinions and correct judgment.
The upshot is that, while thinking about testimonial justice is likely to valorise
those opinions about which the Grand Cyclops feels sure, thinking about testimo-
nial injustice stands some chance (even if only a small chance) of undermining
those views. How does one approach this task of guarding against errors? If the
GC recognizes that he is sometimes epistemically unjust (perhaps towards friends
and fellow Klansmen), he can carefully reflect about what causes these mistakes. If,
for example, he realizes that he sometimes oversimplifies or exaggerates his friends’
opinions, he might work to become more careful about oversimplifying and exag-
gerating others’ views. In that case, there is at least a small chance this newfound
habitual caution will enable him to recognize a good argument from, say, an
ACLU lawyer or anti-racist pastor. Perhaps, on the other hand, the GC does not
see any evidence that he is epistemically unjust on any more than very rare occa-
sions. In that case, he is likely to be less motivated to think about what causes
people to mistakenly judge others unjustly. But it is not out of the question; he
might find the bare possibility of his own errors somewhat interesting, or he might
become more attuned to the causes of others’ errors. Instead of merely resenting
unfair generalizations about white Christians, he might spare a moment to wonder
what sort of mistake causes people to form these unfair generalizations. And if he
correctly identifies some of the mental mechanisms that cause unfair stereotypes,
he is then equipped with a conceptual tool that could, if circumstances are favour-
able, help him recognize his own failings. While thinking about intellectual success
242 B. R. Sherman
invites him to assume he can recognize success, thinking about mistakes demands
that he think about what he doesn’t notice.

5. The Subtler Problem: Invisible Prejudice

I hope I have convinced you that the Grand Cyclops is not as irrelevant an exam-
ple as it seemed at first. The problems foreseen for the GC trying to achieve
testimonial justice are the same in form, though not in content, as those the rest
of us face.
Some might wonder whether the GC is a proper example of someone aiming
to achieve testimonial justice as Fricker defines it. In Fricker’s account, not every
instance of unfairly and unreasonably discounting someone’s testimony is an
instance of testimonial injustice. Rather, she takes testimonial injustice to be, more
specifically, unfair and unreasonable discounting due to prejudice, and testimonial
justice to be a specifically anti-prejudicial virtue. But since the GC whole-heartedly
affirms various identity stereotypes, is he even aiming to be unprejudiced? He is
certainly willing to pre-judge the credibility of a great many people, though he (in-
correctly) thinks the pre-judging is appropriate and well-founded. If “prejudice”
means simply “pre-judgment,” the GC is not aiming for an anti-prejudicial virtue.
But Fricker suggests that “prejudice” “is most naturally interpreted … as a judg-
ment made or maintained without proper regard to the evidence” (32–33), and by
that interpretation the GC would say he is aiming to avoid being prejudiced (in
which case he is mistaken about which pre-judgments are unreasonable.)8
At any rate, those of us who disapprove of the GC’s various identity stereotypes
can certainly hope to find and correct for our own (unreasonable) identity preju-
dices. Perhaps, then, testimonial justice can be revived as a goal, that being the
goal of avoiding testimonial injustice. So long as we avoid the pitfall of imagining
the ideal, and instead concentrate on the prejudices we must avoid, is there any
problem with taking this virtue as a goal to aim for?
There are still problems. For one thing, considering whether we are free from
prejudice invites similar problems to considering whether our judgments are accu-
rate and appropriate. It will sometimes lead us to notice problems in our own
thinking; as Fricker points out, a person might detect prejudice in her own
thoughts by “sensing cognitive dissonance between her perceptions, beliefs and
emotional responses” (91), or we might recognize ourselves treating others’ testi-
mony in a way we recognize from having our own testimony treated that way
(97). But, of course, many prejudices are not so easy to spot. Implicit biases are,
more or less by definition, not easy to introspectively identify as biases. Whereas
we can, with a little reflection, see through the gambler’s fallacy or the Muller-Lyer
illusion, it is much less obvious that we are equipped to directly identify correct
credibility judgments, if our pre-reflective faculties of judgment are biased. While
we can do a little math to disprove the gambler’s fallacy, or conduct a measure-
ment to dispel the Muller-Lyer illusion, determining how much we should reflate
 Social Epistemology 243

someone’s credibility will not be a simple matter, with a clearly identifiable stan-
dard of correctness.9 If something like the prominent versions of the dual-process-
ing model of cognition is correct, conscious, reflective thought is likely to be
unable to process judgments as complex as those involved in evaluating someone’s
credibility; attempts to do consciously will be either wildly unreliable, or will end
up needing to appeal to the faster-processing unconscious gut reaction that is, by
hypothesis, biased (cf. Wilson 2002, 164–175, 188–194; Kahneman 2012, Chap. 21).
Boudry and Braeckman (2012) canvass literature suggesting that someone who is
fairly invested in their beliefs (which could presumably include racial prejudices) is
likely to find reasons to retain their beliefs, even if they are consciously striving to
be correct and rational, on account of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.
Worse still, Sperber and Mercier suggest that reflective reasoning is generally and
predictably subject to confirmation bias, and that reflective reasoning is only likely
to lead to correct conclusions in the context of persuasive discussion with others
who disagree (Sperber et al. 2010; Sperber and Mercier 2012). If this is true, we
should expect people to be systematically bad at revising their initial, biased credi-
bility judgments through reflective reconsideration, unless they consistently had
the opportunity to discuss those judgments with other who have judged accurately
—an implausible hope, when Fricker seems to suppose testimonial justice would
require quick and reliable corrections.
Not only are there reasons to worry that reflection is unlikely to show us the
correct credibility judgments; there is also evidence that striving for objectivity,
and against prejudicial bias, is likely to be a self-defeating strategy in many con-
texts. Several studies suggest we are prone to becoming more biased when we con-
sider whether or not we are biased. (See, for instance, Pronin, Lin, and Ross 2002;
Uhlmann and Cohen 2007). Moreover, forming specifically anti-prejudicial inten-
tions can have ironic effects through the phenomenon of moral credentialing
(Monin and Miller 2001; Effron, Cameron, and Monin 2009) or rebound effects
(Macrae et al. 1994; Monteith, Sherman, and Devine 1998; Follenfant and Ric
2010). While it might be fruitful to be alert for prejudices and biases, thinking
explicitly about whether we succeed in being unprejudiced may be an ineffectual
strategy for becoming unbiased.
But even if we dismiss empirical worries about implicit bias, there is the more
epistemological problem of under-correction. Suppose we notice instances where
we should “reflate” a credibility judgment. How much should we reflate? Our esti-
mates are, of course, still coming from us—those who were prejudiced in the first
place. And then there is the likelihood that our initial credibility judgment will
have an anchoring effect on our reflation. Some correction is better than none (or
at least so I will suppose for the sake of argument), but the initial problem of
using our own judgment as a standard reappears when we reach the point of
trying to correct for recognized prejudices.
This is not to say someone could not succeed in becoming consistently
unprejudiced, or at correcting prejudicial reactions.10 But it is not clear this sort of
success is best described as a virtue. I see no evidence (and Fricker provides none)
244 B. R. Sherman
that there is some such skill or disposition as avoiding prejudices in general.11 It
makes sense to describe an unreasonable prejudice as an ethical and epistemic vice,
and it makes sense to talk about prejudices as a category because they cause func-
tionally similar ethical and epistemic wrongdoing. But the ways that prejudices
infiltrate our thinking, and the ways we can root them out might not be similar
enough for there to be any unified disposition to avoid them. Having avoided or
uprooted 1000 prejudices will not necessarily prevent you from falling prey to
another prejudice, which might develop in a very different way from the other
1000. Testimonial injustice might be a vice (or family of vices) with no correlative
virtue.
Consider an analogy: the intellectual vice of being-stumped-by-puzzles. Some-
one could be disposed to become frazzled and discouraged whenever presented
with a puzzle. But is there is a contrary virtue of being not-stumped-by-puzzles?
Since there are indefinitely many kinds of puzzles, I would not assume there is
any given set of dispositions that will help someone solve them in general, so I
would not imagine there is any such virtue as not-being-stumped-by-puzzles.
Other virtues (like patience) might be helpful with all puzzles, but I would not
expect there to be some disposition relevant to the class of puzzles. An ability to
respond correctly to an indefinitely varied set of challenges sounds more like a
magical super-power than a psychologically possible disposition for a human
being.
So, it seems our best chance of succeeding in avoiding or correcting prejudices
is to remain vigilant about the kinds of prejudices we might be subject to, how to
identify them, and how to correct for them. We might not be able to succeed
without information from the social sciences, and we can never know the social
sciences won’t turn up new prejudices or biases we had failed to notice. Now per-
haps someone who did remain vigilant, and made good use of social scientific
information, could develop a habitual disposition to successfully respond justly to
others. She could have learned about all the prejudices to which she is vulnerable,
or developed a strategy that does, in fact, deal with all prejudices. But she can
never, from her own perspective, know that there are no other prejudices to worry
about. And if someone falsely believed herself to have the virtue of testimonial jus-
tice, believing she has a stable disposition is likely to lead to complacency, not the
sort of vigilance that might possibly produce the virtue. So even if there is such a
virtue as testimonial justice, it is not clear people can ever be in a position to
reasonably believe they have it, or to aim to be in such a position.
Finally, when we consider whether it is possible to avoid or correct for all the
identity prejudices in our society, it is sobering to reflect that it is even less likely
we can ever develop reliable dispositions to be epistemically just in the broader
sense, of giving to each the intellectual credit she deserves. Since we are all sus-
ceptible to biases (such as confirmation bias and false polarization bias), and we
navigate the world by making predictive generalizations which sometimes prove
false, we are all prone to giving some people too little credit sometimes. There is
no such thing as someone who naively is just to everyone all the time. We will all
 Social Epistemology 245

be epistemically unjust to our rivals and critics. We will all sometimes unfairly
mistrust honest salespeople, and underestimate some unusually smart children.
While we might be able to eliminate many unreasonable stereotypes about race
and gender, we will probably always form generalizations about people on the basis
of their culture, economic class, religious views, political orientation, etc. While
these generalizations might be necessary for getting by in life, we should not
assume it is possible for our generalizations to be sufficiently refined to be fully
fair and accurate, as it seems they would need to be if we were to achieve
testimonial justice.

6. How to Think About Epistemic Injustice

Fricker’s writing about testimonial injustice is, I think, immensely valuable. She has
pointed out a problem worthy of attention, and done tremendous work in both
showing its importance, and what makes it a tough problem. But striving for the
virtue of testimonial justice is not, I think, the solution to this problem. How,
then, should we approach epistemic injustice? We need good information about
how we sometimes make this kind of mistake, and good strategies for avoiding it.
We should not assume we already have all the information we need about how we
are prejudiced and how to eliminate prejudices, so we can neither assume that
testimonial justice is an achievable goal given our information, nor that Fricker’s
reflation strategy is a good way to rectify injustice. While the inclination to avoid
being unjust is (probably) indispensible at some level, we should recall that epis-
temic injustice is always a mistake. We never aim for it knowingly, and it is not
usually tempting when recognized for what it is. As a result, the will to be just is
probably much less important than the information and strategies involved in
identifying epistemic injustices. If there is such a virtue as epistemic justice, it will
consist mostly of having such information and strategies. But then, if we have
good information and good strategies, we ought to use them, whether or not there
is any virtue to be developed. It would (probably) be better to use them sometimes
than not at all, so good practice is conceptually independent from the full develop-
ment of the virtue. And if we lack good information and strategies, we probably
have little or no hope of becoming virtuous. As a practical matter, thinking about
epistemic justice as a virtue seems to be no help at all in avoiding epistemic
injustice.
What does this say about a theoretical approach to these matters? For one
thing, one might just abandon virtue theory. This is my own preferred solution.
Most of Fricker’s insights about epistemic injustice do not depend on a virtue-
theoretic framework. All moral theories should worry about the harm and unfair-
ness that she shows resulting from testimonial injustice; all theories of rationality
and epistemic responsibility should be on guard against the errors involved.
246 B. R. Sherman
Moreover, while I think it makes perfect sense to describe testimonial injustice as
a vice, one need not think of it as most fundamentally a vice. It makes perfect
sense to speak of someone committing a testimonial injustice on just a single occa-
sion, without being disposed to do so on any regular basis; the single instance
would still harm the victim as a knower and would still be a mistake. And,
whereas virtue theories sometimes seem committed to the notion that the human
ideal is natural and achievable, some other theories (e.g. consequentialism, contract
theories, the better versions of Kantianism, and even some forms of particularism)
have no problem saying that our moral thinking could always be improved, and
that future improvements might depend on acquiring information that we and
our ancestors never had access to.
But then, some find virtue theories highly persuasive, and little I have said here
challenges virtue theory directly. So another option is to retain virtue theory, but
to reject testimonial justice as a virtue. This is compatible with retaining the theory
of testimonial injustice as a vice, as long as a theory can make sense of vices with
no correlative virtue. I think there are many such vices, so this is a fine option.
How, then, should virtue theorists try to avoid testimonial injustice? By pursuing a
wide variety of moral and epistemic virtues. Moral justice will help, as will epis-
temic responsibility. And, perhaps above all, vigilance will be necessary to learn
about one’s own blind spots, and humility will be required to find and improve
one’s faults. It is the virtues of vigilance and humility that I fear would be most
undermined by a belief in the virtue of testimonial justice.
But there is a final option. Some might be very convinced by Fricker’s descrip-
tion of testimonial justice as a virtue. I have tried to show that striving for this vir-
tue is a bad way to achieve it, and so that Fricker is wrong to say that striving for
the virtue is a good practical response to the problem of testimonial injustice. But
that does not mean it does not exist, so my argument does not show that this vir-
tue would not be part of a correct theory. Rather, my arguments claim that, if the
correct theory does include this virtue, then not all of the correct theory is a good
guide to life. This is not a new problem in moral theory. Since Sidgwick (1907),
Utilitarians have worried that people will do a worse job of promoting utility if
that is their explicit goal. We might bring about better outcomes if we follow con-
ventional rules (which are produced by generations of social experience) than if
we each try to do our own utility calculations. As Parfit (1984, chapter 1) points
out, even if this is true, it would not show that Utilitarianism is a mistaken theory;
rather, it would be what he calls a self-effacing theory, one that, for moral reasons,
tells us not to believe itself (even though it claims to be theoretically correct.) If
virtue theorists want to retain epistemic justice as a virtue, I think they can
consistently do so, as long as they are prepared to admit that some portions of
virtue theory are self-effacing. My impression is that many virtue theorists would
dislike this option, but I see no reason some variants of virtue theory could not
incorporate this sort of esoteric element.
 Social Epistemology 247

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes
[1] One reviewer raises concerns about whether this line of argument is analogous to the
argument that utilitarianism is an incorrect moral theory because it is not a good decision
procedure. If my argument is correct, the situation is worse for Fricker in a couple of
ways. First, a utilitarian could argue (along the lines of Sidgwick 1907, IV.V.3, par. 8) that
utilitarianism is theoretically correct, but should not serve as a guide to action for most
or all people. Fricker, however, commits herself to the view that we should aim for
testimonial justice, and so offers her theory as one suitable to guiding thoughts and
actions. Second, some (notably Railton 1984) argue that utilitarianism (or other forms of
consequentialism) can serve as a standard for right action in practice, not acting as a deci-
sion procedure, but rather serving as a basis for sometimes critically reevaluating our
practices and decisions. My argument in Section 4 aims to show that Fricker’s theory of
testimonial justice is likely to undermine its own aims, even in this more critical and
reflective role.
[2] In very brief form, I will mention here two objections to Fricker’s line of argument. First,
her argument in favor of virtue theory turns centrally on the claim that the standards of
morality and epistemic responsibility are impossible to codify. This claim, though, is at
least somewhat controversial. Second, even if Fricker is right that there is no way to codify
morality and epistemic responsibility, one could adopt a particularist theory of morality
that was not committed to the existence of virtues. Further, various non-particularist
moral theories (including consequentialism and Ross’s (1930) deontological theory of
prima facie duties) and epistemological theories (such as veritism and evidentialism)
could plausibly accept the claim that proper judgment cannot be codified; such theories
stipulate what features of a situation are relevant to ethical or epistemological reasoning,
but do not claim we can know whether we have successfully taken all those relevant
features into account.
[3] Epistemic injustice can, on some occasions, lead to good results, just as lying, breaking
promises, or killing the innocent can sometimes lead to good results. But it is worth not-
ing that the kind of epistemic injustice Fricker discusses is always an error in judgment,
so an agent cannot intentionally engage in epistemic injustice in order to bring about
good consequences.
[4] This is, in a very broad sense, the program of reliabilist virtue epistemology, which is
arguably the branch of virtue theory that fares best against situationist critiques. See
Pritchard (2005), Alfano (2013), 112–114, 140, 149–150, and 158, Fairweather and
Montemayor (2014a, 2014b).
[5] I can, of course, regard someone’s methods or standards of judgment as exemplary, yet
insist that their conclusions are wrong, taking her to be epistemically unlucky. But (a) it
is not clear this is a coherent position, and (b) as Fricker conceives of epistemic justice in
terms of achieving the right results, I cannot regard the exemplary-yet-unlucky person as
just. At best perhaps I can say she is blameless for failing to achieve full justice.
[6] My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point.
[7] There is also a puzzle here about the place of suspended and tentative judgments in
testimonial justice: Suppose, at t1, someone who I take as a role model for epistemic
responsibility disagrees with me about credibility judgments. Suppose that, at t1, she is
right (and just) about the disputed credibility judgments. At t1, I cannot regard her as a
248 B. R. Sherman
role model for testimonial justice because we disagree, but, if I prioritize epistemic
responsibility over testimonial justice, I might suspend judgment about my disputed judg-
ments, at t2. At t2, then, it is an open question whether my judgments are still unjust;
they are at least not inaccurate anymore, though they are still not as accurate as they
could be. Could I then take her as a role model of testimonial justice? Or would my sus-
pended judgment still constitute a disagreement with her (presumably un-suspended)
judgments? Could a form of skepticism about credibility judgments constitute a form of
epistemic justice, because it reliably avoids unjust credibility judgments?
[8] Might the Grand Cyclops proudly recognize that he is unresponsive to the evidence refut-
ing his beliefs? I can imagine such a case, especially if he thinks that people are apt to
trick him by showing him misleading evidence, or even that being willing to question his
own beliefs would be in some sense unfaithful or disloyal. In the former case, he presum-
ably thinks that his current unwillingness to consider new evidence is based on good past
evidence that his beliefs are true, and that there is a real danger of being tricked. The lat-
ter case is more interesting, as it would involve a kind of moral commitment to being
epistemically irresponsible, in at least some situations. But for present purposes I will
suppose the GC thinks he has been, and remains, properly responsive to the available
evidence.
[9] Fricker, in fact, emphasizes this point (91). I take it she thinks the indefinite complexity
of the task to speak in favor of virtue theory, as she seems to think any non-virtue theory
would be faced with the impossible task of codifying the process of correcting a credibility
judgment. But, first, I think she is wrong about other kinds of theory (see n. 2), and the
very complexity she brings up might make it psychologically impossible for reflection to
play the role she intends.
[10] Sassenberg and Moskowitz (2005, 511) suggest that people might be able to cancel out
their prejudicial associations by striving to think creatively, instead of striving to be
unprejudiced. Lai et al. (2014) present findings which suggest that aiming at rectifying
injustice in our thinking is less effective than aiming for counter-stereotypical injustices—
in the experiment, thinking white people as evil or adversarial, and black people as
friendly or helpful. Such strategies might succeed in eliminating someone’s prejudices, but
not, it seems, through taking testimonial justice as a goal.
[11] Sassenberg and Moskowitz (2005) (see previous note) hint at a possible exception. But
their research only shows that people can be primed to stereotype less; their work does
not show that people can do this for themselves.

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