Miragoli
publications
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(2021) "Gender, Race, and Group Disagreement" (with M. Simion). In Group Disagreement, Carter, A. and Broncano-Berrocal, F. (eds.), Routledge. draft
abstract This paper has two aims. The first is critical: it argues that our mainstream epistemology of disagreement does not have the resources to explain what goes wrong in cases of group-level epistemic injustice. The second is positive: we argue that a functionalist account of group belief and group justification delivers (1) an account of the epistemic peerhood relation between groups that accommodates minority and oppressed groups, and (2), furthermore, diagnoses the epistemic injustice cases correctly as cases of unwarranted belief on the part of the oppressor group.
forthcoming / under review
(titles anonymised for blind review)
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A paper on epistemic normativity and white ignorance (draft)
abstract A new philosophical intuition has it that sometimes epistemic agents ought to be sensitive to evidence they do not possess —or, as it is often put, that there are things that one should have known. An interesting consequence is that ignorance can sometimes be understood as a violation of a positive epistemic duty. But extant accounts of epistemic duties problematically restrict their focus on epistemic agents. Here I argue that some cases of white ignorance (what we could call cases of structural white ignorance) make a strong case for the existence of environmental epistemic duties. In shifting the perspective from agents to environments, the main goal of this paper is to outline a normative framework within which epistemic goodness is cashed out in terms of epistemic justice. Since I take the notion of justice to be deeply social, in the attempt to reframe epistemic normativity in this way, a wider ambition of this paper also is brought to light —namely, to make the case for an image of the epistemological domain as fundamentally social.
abstract Epistemic attributions to collective entities are pervasive in ordinary language. We say that juries believe that the defendant is guilty or that gastroenterologists know that ulcers are caused by bacterial infection. Moreover, we naturally take beliefs to be produced in different ways by different types of groups. Beliefs hosted by groups of friends can be understood as mere judgments that are common knowledge within such groups; beliefs attributed to companies or organisations typically correspond to the view of their operative members. Yet, extant views fail to account for such diversity. Deflationary summativism argues that collective beliefs are a function of individual ones, and strong inflationism claims that group beliefs can never be held in deflationary ways. This paper argues that deflationary summativism and strong inflationism are both mistaken and develops in some detail a version of weak inflationism. In a nutshell, the view I defend here allows that groups sometimes host beliefs in a deflationary and sometimes in an inflationary way. Since the view departs from deflationism, it falls within the inflationist camp. Since it differs from strong inflationism in that it allows for groups to hold beliefs in deflationary ways, it is a distinctively weak version of inflationism.
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A paper on group belief (draft)
abstract From music recommendation to asylum applications assessment, machine-learning algorithms play a fundamental role in our lives. Naturally, the rise of AI implementation strategies has brought to public attention the ethical risks involved. However, the dominant anti-discrimination discourse, too often preoccupied with identifying particular instances of harmful AIs, has yet to bring clearly into focus the more structural roots of AI-based injustice. This paper addresses the problem of AI-based injustice from a distinctively epistemic angle. More precisely, I argue that the injustice generated by the implementation of AI machines in our societies is, in some paradigmatic cases, also a form of epistemic injustice. The discussion develops in two steps. First, by looking at machine learning-based AIs, I identify two main concerns about their functioning and implementation practices. Then, I show how these structural features naturally predispose AI-based machines to inflicting injustices of a distinctive epistemic kind. (forthcoming in Episteme)
A synopsis of this article will be included in a white paper edited by the editorial board of the Feminist Philosophical Quarterly
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A paper on AI and epistemic injustice (draft)
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A paper on hinge epistemology (draft)
abstract Hinge epistemology is a theory of justification and knowledge that has recently attracted the attention of a growing number of epistemologists in virtue of its alleged efficacy in dealing with the problem of radical scepticism. In this paper, I argue that the framework reading, one of its most promising formulations, is unsuccessful. In a nutshell, the framework reading argues that the system of our rational evaluation is essentially local, meaning that it rests on a set of arational propositions –hinges– that constitute the limits and the conditions of validity of our epistemic practices. The discussion develops in two main parts. First, I show that, unless important clarifications are made, the framework theory is incapable of offering any solace against the problem of radical scepticism. I then present two ways in which framework theorists may want to clarify their view –following the false line of arguments found in Coliva (2015) and Pritchard (2015)– but find them both wanting.
abstract Mansplaining is an important part of everyday social discourse; yet, with few exceptions, it hasn’t attracted a marked scholarly attention yet. For the most part, when it comes to understanding this phenomenon, hasty and often merely reactive discourses (found online and in the social media) still represent the main authority on the matter. This has led to its systematic underestimation, both in severity and extension. We hereby propose a definition of mansplaining as a form of epistemic harm that stems from the violation of a norm of natural conversation. As it turns out, our analysis shows that our current use of the term mansplaining is inaccurate and prone to generate harmful misunderstandings. Our argument develops as follows: we introduce the phenomenon in §1 and propose our definition. In §2 and §3, we spend some time clarifying the main features of our definition by making reference to Tanesini’s (2016) characterisation of haughty behaviour and Fricker’s (2007) testimonial injustice. In §3, by assessing its impact on the mainstream account of epistemic injustice, the relevance of the phenomenon of mansplaining for contemporary epistemology and feminist theorisation is brought to light.
work in progress
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A paper on inquiry and ideology
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A paper on ignorance as a form of epistemic oppression