Lecture
Public Ethics Talk: The Right to Explanation under Conditions of Epistemic Injustice
- Date
- Thursday 27 November 2025
- Time
- Address
- The presentation will take place online (MS Teams)
- Room
- MS Teams
On Thursday 27 November, the Centre for Public Values & Ethics organises a Public Ethics Talk on ' Time for Democracy: The Right to Explanation under Conditions of Epistemic Injustice'.
The right to explanation is the putative right of data subjects to an explanation of how and/or why the algorithmic decisions that affect them are made. Recognizing the right to explanation is one solution to the problem of algorithmic opacity, or the inscrutability of the frequently complex AI-powered decision-making algorithms that affect important aspects of our lives. Philosophical discussions of the right to explanation center, first, on the question of whether the right to explanation succeeds in securing the normative goods threatened by algorithmic opacity, and, second, on the question of what a satisfactory explanation of algorithmic decisions might look like. The main aim of this talk is to situate these on-going discussions in the context of epistemic injustice.
The central argument I develop is that implementing the right to explanation risks drawing on epistemic practices that are liable to exclude, marginalize or otherwise harm certain communities of knowers. To show this, I first examine the grounds on which the right to explanation is usually defended: to enable self-advocacy, support deliberative agency, and facilitate algorithmic accountability. I then demonstrate that providing explanations with these grounds in mind involves potentially unjust epistemic practices (liable to injustices of both testimonial and hermeneutical kinds). Indeed, giving, demanding, and contesting explanations of algorithmic decisions does not occur in a vacuum, but against the background of social conditions that disadvantage some social groups in the economy of knowledge and belief. It is important to recognize this if we want to ensure equitable access to algorithmic explanations and avoid further marginalizing groups already vulnerable to exploitation and algorithmic bias.
No pre-registration is needed for this event.
Note that this event takes place on MS Teams.
Public Ethic Talks
The series Public Ethics Talks is organised by the Centre for Public Values & Ethics of the Institute of Public Administration, in collaboration with the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and Leiden University College. The talks aim to bring in cutting- edge work in ethics, moral philosophy, political theory and the normative theory of law to reflect on the practice of public policy, organisation and management. The talks are held in public and are open to a wide audience of public professionals, students and academics.