Epistemic injustice in mathematics

Colin Jakob Rittberg; Fenner Stanley Tanswell; Jean Paul Van Bendegem

doi:10.1007/s11229-018-01981-1

Epistemic injustice in mathematics

Colin Jakob Rittberg, Fenner Stanley Tanswell, Jean Paul Van Bendegem

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We investigate how epistemic injustice can manifest itself in mathematical practices. We do this as both a social epistemological and virtue-theoretic investigation of mathematical practices. We delineate the concept both positively—we show that a certain type of folk theorem can be a source of epistemic injustice in mathematics—and negatively by exploring cases where the obstacles to participation in a mathematical practice do not amount to epistemic injustice. Having explored what epistemic injustice in mathematics can amount to, we use the concept to highlight a potential danger of intellectual enculturation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3875-3904
Number of pages	30
Journal	Synthese
Volume	197
Issue number	9
Early online date	26 Oct 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01981-1
Publication status	Published - 1 Sep 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors are indebted to Ladislav Kvasz for a very fruitful discussion about folk theorems. We thank Olivia Caramello for her comments and discussion on the folk theorem section and Katherine Hawley for her helpful comments on Sect. 2. We would also like to thank Andrew Aberdein, Neil Barton, Catarina Dutilh-Novaes, Alessandra Tanesini, Benedikt Löwe, Josh Habgood-Coote, and the audiences at St Andrews, Munich, Hamburg and the CLWF in Brussels for their helpful criticisms on presentations of drafts of this paper. Furthermore, we thank two anonymous referees for their very helpful remarks. Research for this paper by the first author has been funded by the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO), Project G056716N. Research for this paper by the second author was supported by the EPSRC grant for the project ‘The Social Machine of Mathematics’ led by Prof. Ursula Martin [EP/K040251/2].

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Springer Nature B.V.

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

Caramello
Enculturation
Epistemic injustice
Folk theorems
Philosophy of mathematics
Ramanujan
Royen
Virtues

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10.1007/s11229-018-01981-1

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abstract = "We investigate how epistemic injustice can manifest itself in mathematical practices. We do this as both a social epistemological and virtue-theoretic investigation of mathematical practices. We delineate the concept both positively—we show that a certain type of folk theorem can be a source of epistemic injustice in mathematics—and negatively by exploring cases where the obstacles to participation in a mathematical practice do not amount to epistemic injustice. Having explored what epistemic injustice in mathematics can amount to, we use the concept to highlight a potential danger of intellectual enculturation.",

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note = "Funding Information: The authors are indebted to Ladislav Kvasz for a very fruitful discussion about folk theorems. We thank Olivia Caramello for her comments and discussion on the folk theorem section and Katherine Hawley for her helpful comments on Sect. 2. We would also like to thank Andrew Aberdein, Neil Barton, Catarina Dutilh-Novaes, Alessandra Tanesini, Benedikt L{\"o}we, Josh Habgood-Coote, and the audiences at St Andrews, Munich, Hamburg and the CLWF in Brussels for their helpful criticisms on presentations of drafts of this paper. Furthermore, we thank two anonymous referees for their very helpful remarks. Research for this paper by the first author has been funded by the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO), Project G056716N. Research for this paper by the second author was supported by the EPSRC grant for the project {\textquoteleft}The Social Machine of Mathematics{\textquoteright} led by Prof. Ursula Martin [EP/K040251/2]. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018, Springer Nature B.V. Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",

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Epistemic injustice in mathematics

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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