On the introduction of a new term, for example, epistemic injustice


Author's name (parents' draft): Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft): 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. The introduction of a term can be a significant event for us. Before we had an experience which we would describe in many words and now we have a term we can use. But if the experience is an age-old one, we are likely to wonder: is there not some term here already? Surely this type of thing has been noticed before, or something very similar. And even if there is no term, what credit should we give to the new term's maker? The essay focuses on the term "epistemic injustice," introduced by Miranda Fricker. I am not sure how difficult this term was to introduce: presenting considerations in favour of its being difficult and quite easy. (The consideration in favour of easiness is: there is a social circle who collect scenes from fictions which merit a term and if you are part of the circle, you have access to what they have collected and merely need to introduce a term for one such scene or what goes on within it.) Then I wonder whether Martha Nussbaum stands in a severe relation of epistemic injustice to Bernard Williams: she shares the same aim but writes more because "How do I gain an enduring place otherwise?" The paper opens with a poem about Greta Thunberg, I suppose, and is not perfectly orderly by my standards.
Draft version: version 4 (28 May 2026 slight edits; 25th October 2025 major revisions; draft 1 on October 1st 2025)
Software used (freeware): Google docs
PDFs available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396084936_On_the_introduction_of_a_new_term_for_example_epistemic_injustice
And: https://www.academia.edu/144632313/On_the_introduction_of_a_new_term_for_example_epistemic_injustice


"I will serve my community and find out
What immigration is all about -
I too do not understand
In little groups we like to band -
Shall sail a boat to foreign seas
And bring the world to its knees"


There are so many new terms these days. A term may sound like something scientific, something from a specifically scientific vocabulary, but I am not distinguishing terms from words here. Some of the new terms are probably no different in meaning from rusty old terms, which are hardly used these days. For example, sometimes you probably find yourself in a situation in which you want to call someone "a square," for being too unadventurous, but how to use slang from the mid-twentieth century today? Other terms refer to rather transient things, such as a dance craze. Yet other terms seem of enduring value, whether we look forwards or backwards, but if they would have been useful generations ago and will probably be useful generations hence, why did they only appear now? Indeed, did a term for this really only appear now? And if it is new, what credit should we give to the inventor of the term?


I find myself asking these questions when I think about the philosophical term "epistemic justice." It may sound like esoteric jargon, but have you ever had this experience? You are puzzled by a situation - "I don't know what is going on," you might simply say - and others are not puzzled. And it is not as if they are simply not prone to puzzlement in general or minimally prone; they too are prone but in this particular situation they know what is going on more than you. And you feel this is unfair. Philosophers today call actual unfairness of this type, this kind, this nature  "epistemic injustice": the term was introduced by Miranda Fricker. Injustice to do with knowing is the natural interpretation of the term. Now experiences after which the term seems appropriate are quite common, are they not? So are there not terms for this in the past, or very similar terms? Okay, maybe there are not, but are there not at least descriptions of the experiences which lead us to use the term? The widespread disposition of contemporary philosophers to ignore historical sources (or else historical sources outside a rather narrow horizon), as if an area of philosophy really began at some recent date, such as 1971, seems risky here, even if it is somehow good: certainly it contributes to a pleasing effect to some tastes. One can just take an old novel or other text, introduce a term which applies to or in a scene which so many can relate to - "This be epistemic injustice" - and go global: become a global success with one's shiny new term. What should we say about this?


One response is that it is more difficult to do than you think. I will give an example to illustrate. I introduced a term into the Thomas Kuhn literature: novelty-suppression. I exported it from psychiatry, without interest in being faithful to its use there. Thomas Kuhn says (as do some people before him probably) that a scientific community with an established theoretical framework doesn't pay much attention to new data, especially challenging new data. Members work on a few puzzles. But the easier ones are solved and hard ones remain and new challenging data cannot be swept under the carpet - cannot be irresponsibly ignored - and new hard puzzles arise and the shared confidence in the established theoretical framework declines. When new data is ignored, we can speak of novelty-suppression. Before we would probably have said, "Scientists are conservative," or normal scientists. But what is it to be conservative? The word "conservative" is used for so many things, such as attachment to tradition and risk-aversion (which is different: it can be extremely risky to continue with a certain tradition) and concern that norms of etiquette are maintained. "Novelty-suppression" is a more precise term, for the ignoring of the new. Well, I like it anyway! I am surely going global with this one! But it was not so easy to transfer this term over, and we are not even dealing with the creation of a new term here. Maybe I cannot do this trick again of coming up with a catchy label or else mercurially transferring one. It is not so easy to do. (Oh, but here is another one, this time my own term: Nietzchy-novel. It is deficient in plot or character but has lots of quotable lines.)


But a different and more suspicious perspective is that it is easy to introduce a new useful term if you belong to a certain social circle. Members gather up passages from texts which they can all relate to and say, "There needs to be a general term for this." And they have a shared database: "phil-labelthisplease" maybe it is called! The difficult thing is getting into the circle, so you can access the database. Once you can access it, you can introduce a term for something on the list. I anticipate someone's saying, "You go around labelling stuff by yourself, when the thought that a certain term for a certain type of thing would be a good idea. Only an idiot would do that." ("We will nevertheless give some reward for term and concept introductions, different from the Fricker reward though and in many eyes miniscule. But not nothing. Slightly more if you wrote a whole book on novelty-suppression, um, er. Progress, progress towards social justice: we are making progress!")


When I imagine this quite different perspective to my own, which I am not sure actually exists, the introduction of the term "epistemic justice" does not seem such an achievement. But maybe I am still not thinking enough from the perspective of a privileged social group. "Why would we introduce the concept of epistemic injustice? We rarely experience this." From a privileged enough perspective, it is an achievement!


Anyway, I want to talk now about how you react to epistemic injustice if you are a comedian. Here is a simple choice: you write a joke/comedic material about it or you don't." (But reality is messier,  because a joke might be about this to you and your friends, but this is unclear to others.) Of course the interesting choice is if you do. So how are you going to do the comedic material? I presented this sketch idea on my Instagram site. My friend and I go to a football match. I complain that there is no art in this. The players are strong, they run fast, they have trained a lot; where is the mystery, where is the art? Next week (or whenever), my friend takes me to another football match. The best team in the world, the Spanish team say, is playing against a team of people who look out-of-shape and unlikely to win. But the game does not proceed as I expect. This other team do well. They get the ball from the Spanish team and when the Spanish team try to get the ball back, it proves difficult. An unfit-looking player clicks his fingers. A Spanish player mysteriously falls. The out-of-shape opposition win. My friend says, "Happy now. There is some mystery this time." I reply, "I don't understand what is going on here at all. How could players like that win?" My friend says, "You asked for some art, some mystery, and you are complaining still." I wonder how many people who write comedy sketches would react to the stimulus of some epistemic injustice, in a department of an organization say, much as I did? A similar sketch, involving sport.


"You are common as muck"??? Okay, here is a somewhat different reaction, a different comedy sketch idea. You don't understand what is going on in an academic boardroom meeting. The graph does not make sense to you. There are letters instead of numbers, say. You ask about that but the explanation is puzzling. Then you ask to be excused. You go outside and in the gardens is a lawnmower. You mow the lawn and sing, "I don't understand what is going on, I think I shall just mow the lawn." Then you suddenly get an electric shock. (By the way, the bus did not come for 40 minutes tonight, and I planned to go to comedy, probably do some comedy. I could have crossed over to the other side of the university/hospital and taken the bus from Oxford Road, where more buses go. But was that: gov-hint?)


You know I was thinking: I can't surpass Foucault or Derrida but maybe scrape past Deleuze? (Foolishly thinking!) Then I was thinking these French philosophers seem different but are they very similar, just a strange special effect of diversity? Meanwhile, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, Martha Nussbaum, and I seem so similar, but the distance between these essayistic islands is immense? "What has this to do with your topic of introducing new terms or your chosen example of epistemic injustice?" I wonder whether Martha Nussbaum is in a condition of epistemic injustice compared with Bernard Williams. "This person has much the same ambitions as me, long-term recognition, but how is he going to achieve them with this body of writing? I have no idea how. I am going to have to use the simpleton approach: readable writing and lots and lots of it," Martha Nussbaum thinks?


I myself experience more epistemic injustice than Nussbaum, I feel. "How did she get that published?" I once asked about her Nietzsche article. But "The distance between Bernard Williams and Martha Nussbaum in terms of epistemic injustice is so large that she might as well be you," I imagine someone's saying. No! By the way, Nussbaum seems academically isolated compared to Judith Butler, with her many followers and books devoted to her. But my friend, insofar as I have friends, showed me a photograph of a literary agent he sent a novel to and she looks a Nussbaum-clone. There are loads of these but at the boundary between philosophy and more practical stuff?




References
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Novelty-suppression in a scientific community: an alternative to Kuhn. Available at PhilPapers, at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWNIA
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Why do you think graduates at elite universities are 20 years ahead of you?" Available at PhilPapers, at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWQDY
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Michael Foucault's economic error? (And CODING task.) Available at: 
https://www.academia.edu/144336671/Michel_Foucaults_economic_error_And_CODING_task_
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (In her book, Fricker sounds as if she would use the term "hermeneutical injustice" for what I call epistemic injustice. I found some of it online. I have perhaps not been very fair to this book, even raising the questions I do. She does refer to earlier fictions.) See:
https://circulosemiotico.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/fricker-miranda-epistemic-injustice.pdf
Kuhn, Thomas. 2012 (fourth edition). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.