Definition
Plain language
Being treated unfairly in your ability to know or make sense of things, not in money or punishment.
As stated in the literature
A category of injustice concerning knowledge and understanding rather than material resources; includes cases where a group is systematically denied the concepts needed to interpret their own experience.
Why it matters: It names a harm that money or punishment cannot measure, so people building or judging systems can notice when someone is being unfairly cut off from knowing or being believed.
For example, a patient whose reported symptoms are dismissed as imagined is wronged in their standing as a knower, not in their wallet.
Heard on the show
“The full annotated version is on paperdive dot AI — every term tap-to-define, with links to the related papers on AI bias and epistemic injustice grouped by theme.”Episode 216 — The AI Tutor That Gives Poor Kids a Thinner History