In this presentation, I bring animal ethics into conversation with epistemic injustice. I consider a preliminary objection to thinking that epistemic injustice could apply to nonhuman animals (henceforth animals): animals cannot experience epistemic injustice because they do not possess the features or capacities of knowers. Animals may be cognitive, affective, and conative creatures, but not proper epistemic agents. Animals are not epistemic agents because, according to internalists about justification, they cannot access the normative aspects of epistemology; only persons have the capacity to either become aware of and understand what justifies their beliefs, or can be held responsible for what they believe. Since animals cannot do either, they cannot wrong nor be wronged in such a way that qualifies as epistemic injustice. However, I propose that animals can be subject to epistemic injustice in terms of their know-how. I draw from Gilbert Ryle and understand know-how as successful performance resulting from perfectible, self-regulated ability. I then consider the conditions for know-how’s justification, and draw from work on extended cognition to argue for an externalist conception of ‘extended knowing,’ where the subject of knowledge is not just the isolated animal, but the animal-and-their-environment. Animals can then experience epistemic injustice through human action that disregards their cognitive and epistemic needs and disrupts their environments in such a way that animals lose know-how or their potential to gain know-how.

Andrew Lopez is a doctoral candidate at Queen’s University. He specializes in animal philosophy, feminist philosophy, and social and political philosophy.