Title: Injustice and Understanding Transmission: Diminishment in a Speaker’s Capacity to Transmit Understanding

Abstract: I describe two conditions that successful understanding transmission requires, the engender condition and the sufficient degree condition. To motivate this account, I appeal to the behavior and circumstances of instructors who I assume often aim at causing their audiences to understand rather than merely know information they present. I explain how a social-political feature of society such as racial injustice can depress the likelihood that a speaker successfully transmits understanding to her audience. A goal in offering this explanation is to provide a novel explanation of how racial injustice contributes to the ignorance of racial injustice or what Charles Mills called White ignorance.

Speaker Bio: Eric Bayruns García is an Assistant Professor in McMaster University's philosophy department. He is also a 2022-2023 Fellow in Residence at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.