Epistemic Injustice and Open‐Mindedness

In this paper, I argue that recent discussions of culprit‐based epistemic injustices can be framed around the intellectual character virtue of open‐mindedness. In particular, these injustices occur because the people who commit them are closed‐minded in some respect; the injustices can therefore be remedied through the cultivation of the virtue of open‐mindedness. Describing epistemic injustices this way has two explanatory benefits: it yields a more parsimonious account of the phenomenon of epistemic injustice and it provides the underpinning of a virtue‐theoretical structure by which to explain what it is that perpetrators are culpable for and how virtues can have normative explanatory power.