Difference

Question 1

Who is the text associated with difference

Answer 1

Jose Medina

Question 2

What is the title of the text associated with Difference

Answer 2

Active ignorance, Epistemic Others, and Epistemic Friction

Question 3

Name the ‘epistemic virtues’ of the privileged

Answer 3

access to information, access to educational institutions, capacity to disseminate knowledge and to common epistemic authority, having a credible voice.

Question 4

What is an epistemic vice

Answer 4

a set of corrupted attitudes and dispositions that get in the way of knowledge. character flaw.

Question 5

What is an epistemic virtue

Answer 5

a character trait that constitutes an epistemic advantage for the individual who possesses it and for those who interact with him/her.

Question 6

What is the first epistemic vice of the “privileged elites” and what is it a result of?

Answer 6

As a result of having cognitive benefits due to the access to education and more importantly mastering cognitive authority when speaking and receive no resistance or challenges to their voice. They presume to “know everything” and therefore are more prone to “epistemic arrogance.”

Question 7

What example does Medina use of the privileged elites having epistemic arrogance. (Historical example)

Answer 7

Alexis de Torqueville and the slave holders in the 1830s. This white southerner first habit he learns is to “rule without resistance.” The slaveholders have to be subservient to his voice.

Question 8

Describe “epistemic arrogance.” What time of “knowing” is this due to.

Answer 8

Letting one’s perspective go unchecked results in oversights, biased stereotypes and distortions. This is because they presume to know all there is to know from one’s own racial and gender perspective (often without realising he has one.) insensitive to contrary viewpoints and perspectives.
cultivated by the privilege of being “assumed to know.”

Question 9

What is the second epistemic vice that the “privileged elites” have?

Answer 9

Epistemic Laziness: there are entire domains that those in a position of privilege do not need to familiarise themselves with.
lack of effort and motivation to find out more about how racial or gender differences might have an impact on people’s experiences and standpoints.
carefully orchestrated and socially produced lack of curiosity.

Question 10

What is laziness cultivated by…?

Answer 10

Cultivated by the privilege of not needing to know.

Question 11

What is the example that Medina uses for laziness?

Answer 11

The not needing to know is shown in the domestic realm. Men who were powerful and wealthy would never bother to learn about the “housework, or “the care of children.” To change a nappy because they simply didn’t need to know as they would never have to change one.
This produces cognitive limitations in domestic aspects of daily life; certain things they cannot do.

Question 12

What is another examples (not domesticity) that Medina uses to describe laziness

Answer 12

Another area put out of cognitive reach is the mechanisms of oppression that create marginalisation, social death - genocide. Although the machinery that punishes the oppressed is in the hands of the elite, not visible. In some cases when the machinery of oppression is particularly violent, it is made invisible to some members of elite because they are unable to handle it. Actually ignorant and surprised to hear about the oppression taking place which they benefit from.

Question 13

What does “not needing to know create? (A lack of…and the actual vice)

Answer 13

lack of curiosity about those areas of life or those social domains that one has learned to not concern oneself with.
EPISTEMIC LAZINESS, damages one’s objectivity.

Question 14

How does the ignorance differ with laziness and with closed mindedness

Answer 14

There is the luxury of not needing to know and the necessity of needing not to know. One is passive and one requires a huge amount of active ignorance to ignore.

Question 15

Write the three Epistemic vices of privileged elites?

Answer 15

Laziness, Arrogance and Closed mindedness.

Question 16

What is the third epistemic vice that the “privileged elites” have?

Answer 16

Epistemic “closed mindedness”

Question 17

Is closed mindedness usually narrow?

Answer 17

usually involves the lack of openness to a huge range of experiences and viewpoints that can create trouble for your own perspective

Question 18

What is closed mindedness cultivated by…?

Answer 18

cultivated by a defence mechanism of needing not know in order to preserve privilege

Question 19

What is the example that Medina uses for closed mindedness? (The broad examples)

Answer 19

White supremacists who have deemed the voices and perspectives of members of other racist groups as unworthy of epistemic respect, not open to listen to them or learn as could result in their perspective changing. or the male who systematically undermines the authority of the women gives them no credibility to their perception, reasoning ect. by saying they’re hysterical, irrational.

Question 20

How can systematic closed mindedness be more narrow and specific?

Answer 20

to a particular historical event such as genocide or particular experience such as date rape. an event like the systematic practices of torture during the Bush administration.

Question 21

How is closed mindedness implicit yet explicit?

Answer 21

it is implicit attitudes and unconscious habits to ignore certain perspectives and experiences; defence mechanism to live with yourself. But explicit in actively managing oppression in regards to political and social policy; colour blindness and gender blindness.

Question 22

What is the issue with saying “When I look at you, I do not see gender: I do not see a woman.” “When I look at you, I do not see colour: I do not see a black person.”

Answer 22

This is not an achievement, intention might be that you do not see stereotypes with people, but just by saying it does not mean prejudices go away. the complete refusal to see colour of gender in a racist or sexist society involves refusal to acknowledge that these prejudices exist and how they affect you. Not seeing the person for who they are, for what has made their identity.

Question 23

Why is gender blindness and colour blindness usually only directed at the oppressed?

Answer 23

This is because ‘epistemic hiding’ needs to be directed at the oppressed so that the person who is making these claims can feel socially distanced from the racist and sexist ideologies and discrimination. Also if you don’t see prejudice than you also can not see the privilege that you experience as a result of being white, male, dominant.

Question 24

The epistemic vices of arrogance, laziness and closed-mindedness greatly contribute to the production of a particular form of…

Answer 24

ignorance called active ignorance.

Question 25

Define active ignorance ?

Answer 25

an ignorance that occurs with the active participation of the subject and with a battery of defence mechanisms.

Question 26

What is the opposite of epistemic arrogance…? and define it.

Answer 26

Epistemic humility = attentiveness to one’s cognitive limitations and deficits is a virtue as willing to qualify one’s own knowledge and other’s knowledge.
- Results from a humble and self questioning attitude, having the limits of one’s knowledge exposed and questioned leads to actually better learning.

Question 27

What did gender studies show?

Answer 27

Gender studies showed that the oppressed felt intellectually inferior as had a poor assessment of one’s cognitive capacities.

Question 28

What is ego skepticism and who does it affect?

Answer 28

a skepticism about the self and its capacities, a constant self questioning that leads to poor self esteem, poor self confidence and inferiority complex. Shown by Charles Mills (1998) who said the oppressed subject frequently questions whether they are a real person or deserve the treatment they are receiving.

Question 29

What is the opposite of epistemic laziness…? and define it?

Answer 29

Epistemic curiosity/diligence - more likely with subjects who identify what they cannot claim to know and are motivated to fill in those cognitive gaps; understand they don’t know everything.
- Another incentive is out of necessity, relations of oppression create cognitive needs, in order to satisfy one’s master. oppressed attain a surplus of intellectual curiosity and diligence.

Question 30

What is the opposite of Epistemic closed mindedness?

Answer 30

Epistemic open mindedness is the third virtue.

Question 31

Define epistemic open mindedness?

Answer 31

Oppressed subjects tend to feel the need to be more attentive to perspective of others. Have to acknowledge, respect and inhabit other perspectives as you don’t have the dominant perspective, forced to see reality through other people’s eyes in order to survive, often through the eyes of those whose perspectives matter more. You are aware of other standpoints unlike the elites.

Question 32

What is the opposite of active ignorance?

Answer 32

Subversive lucidity

Question 33

What does resistance mean? (Not epistemic resistance)

Answer 33

The dictionary definition of “resist” includes an active and a passive meaning: to exert oneself so as to defeat: and to withstand the force or effect of. What about withstanding epistemic force?

Question 34

What are the different kinds of epistemic resistance that subjects exert or endure in their cognitive lives?

Answer 34

There are both internal and external epistemic resistances, each can both be negative or positive.

Question 35

What is Epistemic resistance?

Answer 35

Responsibility for the resistances they contribute to maintain or to eradicate, for the ways these resistances are acknowledged or ignored…

Question 36

What does Iris Marion Young focus on in 2006?

Answer 36

a model of responsibility which focuses on shared responsibility.

Question 37

What kind of responsibility do we have?

Answer 37

We are not responsible for the family, community, or culture into which we are born, but we do bear a certain amount of responsibility (shared responsibility) for the marks left on us by different social groups, that is, for sustaining the influence of those groups in our acts and in our lives. Its the effect on us, not the actual attitude of the group, community ect.

Question 38

What can those not do if they are not critically aware of their own social identity and that of others…

Answer 38

cannot correct biases and achieve epistemic justice.

Question 39

Distinguish between active ignorance and epistemic lucidity?

Answer 39

The epistemic vices of arrogance, laziness and closed-mindedness greatly contribute to the production of a particular form of ignorance: active ignorance.
there are distinctive epistemic advantages that can be found among oppressed subjects:…there is a special kind of lucidity with a particular subversive force, which can be found among members of those groups.

Question 40

Explain how the virtues and vices are conditioned by social position? (How has the social position tended to produce these vices and virtues)

Answer 40

The key thing to look for is what is the argument he gives, of how the virtues and vices are conditioned by social positions.

Question 41

What is the other example for epistemic laziness?

the mechanisms of oppression that can create social death such as genocide…

Answer 41

Although the punishment of the oppressed is in the hands of those in power, its day to day operations, not visible to those who occur a position of power. In some cases the machinery that is performing this oppression is made invisible to protect some members of the privileged class because they maybe unable to handle it. 
They don't need to know about this oppressive machinery because it doesn't affect them. 
They have great access to this information but can be ignorant of the violence committed to maintain their privilege.

Question 42

What happens by converging the epistemic arrogance with epistemic laziness ?

Answer 42

it seriously compromises one’s learning potential and contributions to knowledge.