Understanding, knowledge, injustice and the right to know

Abstract

Watson’s monograph, The Right to Know: Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them, clearly, succinctly and deftly introduces the notion of the right to know or epistemic rights to the epistemology literature. She does this partly by connecting the conclusions and theoretical motives of the moral and legal rights literature to the epistemology literature. In part, motivated by this book’s great value, I present two objections to some of the book’s central claims. The first objection is that there is tension between (i) the book’s claim that information distribution is a basic epistemic duty that epistemic rights generate and (ii) the book’s claim that epistemic rights are complied with if subjects receive epistemic goods such as understanding and knowledge that respect their final value. The second objection is that the dyadic nature of Watson’s account of epistemic rights violation does not comport with plausible cases in which non-dominant groups’ epistemic rights have been violated and as a consequence the book’s claim that epistemic rights provide those who wield them an especially forceful rhetorical tool requires further motivation.