Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Annual Lecture 2024

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Quiet as its Kept: On Epistemic Frailty

Professor Kristie Dotson (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

In this talk, I explore the notion of epistemic frailty in our political lives. Epistemic frailty, on my account, refers to a state of becoming bullishly set in our understandings of our worlds due to lessons learnt from living. It refers to a kind of brittleness with respect to our grasps on our worlds, which is not only the result of finitude; but is also the result of so-called “learning from experience.” To be clear, epistemic frailty is an inevitable site of vulnerability with respect to knowledge for beings like us.

I’ll explore an episode of epistemic frailty by storying it in four registers. First, according political orientation. Second, according to a detailed example. Third, in the development of a theory. And, fourth, according to abstracted reflection. I tell these stories about epistemic frailty in order to demonstrate my major claim: we need new and better philosophical arts to grapple with the many ways our epistemic frailty can encourage us to testify against ourselves.

Professor Kristie Dotson is a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Philosophy and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. She specializes in epistemology, metaphilosophy, and feminist philosophy (especially women of colour and Black feminisms).

Her work primarily focuses on exploring how knowledge plays a role in maintaining and obscuring oppression. She has published numerous articles in leading philosophy journals on the epistemic aspects of power relations, the challenges of inclusivity and diversity in knowledge production, and the nature of philosophy as a discipline.