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Epistemic injustice in mathematics

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-10-24, 12:59 authored by Colin J. Rittberg, Fenner Tanswell, Jean Paul Van Bendegem
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.

Funding

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].

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematics Education Centre

Published in

Synthese

Volume

197

Pages

3875 - 3904

Citation

RITTBERG, C.J., TANSWELL, F.S. and VAN BENDEGEM, J.P., 2020. Epistemic injustice in mathematics. Synthese, 197, pp.3875-3904.

Publisher

© Springer Nature

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Synthese. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01981-1

Acceptance date

2018-10-09

Publication date

2018-10-26

ISSN

0039-7857

eISSN

1573-0964

Language

  • en

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