Dr Miranda Fricker

Reader in the Department of Philosophy

Email: m.fricker@bbk.ac.uk

Miranda Fricker is Head of the Department of Philosophy, and Chair of the Research Postgraduate Committee in the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy.

She is the Director of the Mind Association.

Miranda gave the 2009 Simone Weil Lectures on Human Value, held in Sydney and Melbourne.

Research interests

Her main areas of interest are in ethics, epistemology, and in those regions of feminist philosophy that concern social identity, power, and the authority of reason.

Areas of research supervision

I supervise graduate students in most areas of ethics, and in many areas of epistemology, but most particularly in social epistemology (including feminist epistemology), virtue epistemology or value driven epistemology broadly construed.

Current PhD students

My current PhD students are:

• Elianna Fetterolf, who is working on moral responsibility
• Dan Turnbull who is finishing up a thesis on shame and related moral emotions
• Alya Kahn, who is writing on autonomy, with a focus on relational and feminist accounts of autonomy

Congratulations to Paul Crichton who was recently awarded the PhD for his thesis on self-realization.

Publications

Miranda co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy with Jennifer Hornsby (2000); and she is co-author of Reading Ethics, written with Sam Guttenplan, an introductory textbook giving interactive commentaries on classic texts in moral philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Her book, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (OUP, 2007), explores how relations of social power and identity impinge in our epistemic practices to produce distinctively epistemic forms of injustice—injustices in which someone is undermined specifically in their capacity as a knower.

For some reviews, see below under 'Books'.

Symposia on the book can be found in Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol. 7, Issue 2 (2010), with commentators Linda Alcoff, Sanford Goldberg, and Chris Hookway; and in Theoria: An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science Vol. 23/1 No. 61 Jan 2008, with commentators Jesus Zamora Bonilla and Francisco Javier Gil Martin.

Social Epistemology is bringing out a special issue on Epistemic Injustice, ed. James Bohman (forthcoming, 2011, Vol. 25, Issue 4).

Books


• Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (OUP, 2007) - view abstract; read online reviews in (i) Notre Dame Philosophical Review and (ii) Philosophy (2009), 84 147-151 Cambridge University Press; download Times Literary Supplement review (in pdf format)
• Reading Ethics: an interactive commentary on selected texts in moral philosophy, co-written with Sam Guttenplan (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) - view details
• The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, co-edited with Jennifer Hornsby (CUP, 2000) - view details


Selected papers
• 'Group Testimony? The Making of A Collective Good Informant?', forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research - view paper (in pdf format)
• ‘Silence and Institutional Prejudice’, Out From the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, eds. Sharon Crasnow and Anita Superson (OUP, forthcoming) - view paper (in pdf format)
• 'Styles of Moral Relativism - A Critical Family Tree', Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp (OUP, Forthcoming) view paper (in pdf format)
• 'The Relativism of Blame and Williams’ Relativism of Distance', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supp. Vol. LXXXIV (2010), 151-77 - view paper (in pdf format)
• ‘Can There Be Institutional Virtues?’, Oxford Studies in Epistemology (Special Theme: Social Epistemology) Vol. 3, eds. T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (2010) pp. 235-252 - view paper (in pdf format)
• 'Replies to Alcoff, Goldberg, and Hookway', Book Symposium on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing in Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol. 7, Issue 2 (2010)
• ‘Scepticism and The Genealogy of Knowledge: Situating Epistemology in Time’ (Philosophical Papers, Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 27-50), reprinted in A. Haddock, A. Millar & D. Pritchard (eds.) Social Epistemology (OUP, 2010) - view abstract/request paper
• ‘The Value of Knowledge and The Test of Time’, Epistemology, Royal Institute of Philosophy Series (Cambridge University Press, 2008) 'translated into Spanish and reprinted in eds. Margarita Valdés and Miquel Àngel Fernàndez, Valores Epistémicos (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010)' - view paper
• ‘Powerlessness and Social Interpretation’, Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology Vol. 3 Issue 1-2 (2006); 96-108 - view paper
• ‘Epistemic Injustice and A Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing’, Metaphilosophy vol. 34 Nos. 1/2 Jan 2003; reprinted in M. Brady and D. Pritchard eds. Moral and Epistemic Virtues (Blackwell, 2003) - view abstract
• ‘Life-Story in Beauvoir’s Memoirs’, The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir ed. Claudia Card (CUP, 2003)
• ‘Confidence and Irony’, Morality, Reflection, and Ideology ed. Edward Harcourt (OUP, 2000)

Podcasts

• The Philosopher's Zone, August 2009, (Australian Radio): An interview with Miranda on the Simone Weil Lectures on Human Value
• Ethics Bites: Miranda discusses moral relativism
• BBC In Our Time, November 2007: Discussing Guilt - also on the programme: Oliver Davies and Stephen Mulhall
• Philosophy Bites interview, June 2007: Miranda talks about her book, Epistemic Injustice
• BBC In Our Time, November 2006: Discussing Altruism - also on the programme: Richard Dawkins and John Dupré
• BBC In Our Time, November 2005: Discussing American pragmatists - also on the programme: A C Grayling and Julian Baggini
• BBC In Our Time, February 2002: Discussing Virtue - also on the programme: Roger Crisp and Galen Strawson

Conference Invitations, Public Lectures, and Overseas Colloquia

• Aug 2011 Monash University, Melbourne ‘Constructing A Collective Good Informant’
• Aug 11 Flinders University, Adelaide Conference, A Sense For Humanity: The Ethical Thought of Raimond Gaita ‘The Power of Negative Thinking: Remorse and Blame’
• May 11 Rutgers Epistemology Conference 2011 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey ‘Group Testimony? The Collective Good Informant’
• Apr 11 Conference, Science, Knowledge & Democracy University of Southern Carolina
• Dec 2010 University of Vienna colloquium ‘Practical Explication: Towards a Risk Aware Epistemology’
• July 10 Joint Session of the Mind and Aristotelian Society, Dublin ‘The Relativism of Blame and Williams’s Relativism of Distance’
• Feb 10 American Philosophical Association Conference, Chicago Self-Trust, Symposium with Linda Zagzebski, and Karen Jones ‘The Political Significance of Epistemic Injustice’
• Feb 10 American Philosophical Association Conference, Chicago Author-meets-Critics session on Epistemic Injustice, with ‘critics’ Kristie Dotson, Linda Alcoff, and Ishani Maitra
• Nov 09 MIT Colloquium, Boston ‘The Relativism of Blame’
• Nov 09 2009 Forum for Philosophical Research Public Lecture, Keele ‘Institutionalized Silencing: Group Prejudice & Testimonial Injustice’
• Sept 09 Conference on Experts, Authority and Law, University of Hull ‘Modelling Institutional Virtue and Vice’
• Aug 09 Public lecture, 2009 Simone Weil Lectures on Human Value, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia; ‘Knowledge and Prejudice’
• Aug 09 Workshop on Epistemic Injustice, National University of Singapore ‘Testimonial Justice as an Institutional Virtue?’
• Apr 09 Public lecture, Royal Institute of Philosophy University of Lancaster ‘Can Institutions Have Virtues and Vices?’
• Mar 09 Public lecture, Royal Institute of Philosophy, University of Bradford ‘Institutions and Collective Virtues’
• Dec 08 American Philosophical Association Conference, Philadelphia Author-meets-Critics session on Epistemic Injustice, with ‘critics’, Chris Hookway, Sandford Goldberg, & Linda Alcoff
• Nov 08 University College Dublin colloquium ‘Forms of Institutional Virtue’
• Oct 08 Workshop on Collective Epistemology, University of Basel ‘Institutional Virtue?’
• Oct 08 Public lecture, Royal Institute of Philosophy, University of Wolverhampton ‘Forms of Institutional Virtue’
• July 08 Annual Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, University of St Andrews ‘Can Groups Have Virtues?’
• June 08 Conference on Intellectual Virtue and Vice, California State University, Fullerton; ‘Institutional Virtue?’
• April 08 University of St Louis, Missouri colloquium ‘Williams’ Relativism of Distance’
• April 08 Vanderbilt University, Tennessee Colloquium ‘Moral Relativism and Blame’