Abstract

AbstractAccording to anti‐reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, testimonial entitlement is easy to come by: all you need to do is listen to what you are being told. Say you like anti‐reductionism; one question that you will need to answer is how come testimonial entitlement comes so cheap; after all, people are free to lie.This paper has two aims: first, it looks at the main anti‐reductionist answers to this question and argues that they remain unsatisfactory. Second, it goes on a rescue mission on behalf of anti‐reductionism. I put forth a novel, knowledge‐first anti‐reductionist account, which I dub ‘Testimonial Contractarianism’. According to the view defended here, in virtue of the social contract in play, compliance with the norms governing speech acts is the default position for speakers. Insofar as norm compliance is the default for speakers, I argue, all else equal, entitlement to believe is the default for hearers.

Highlights

  • We1 believe what other people tell us

  • I trust that you are on the way to the mall if you tell me you are on the way to the mall; I believe that the price of oil has gone down because I heard it on the news

  • That’s why we find demanding normative requirements for testimonial entitlement in this kind of case: in order to ensure avoidance of error, positive reasons for trusting the speaker are required

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

We1 believe what other people tell us. I trust that you are on the way to the mall if you tell me you are on the way to the mall; I believe that the price of oil has gone down because I heard it on the news. I argue that, in virtue of the social contract we are part of, we are prima facie entitled to trust that other people will obey social norms; we don’t need positive reasons to believe that they will. Since it is plausible that some epistemic norms – to wit, norms governing speech acts – are social norms, it follows that in virtue of the social contract we are part of we are prima facie entitled to believe what other people tell us; we don’t need positive reasons to trust speakers. The account put forth is strongly anti-reductionist, in that it argues that speakers are prima facie entitled to believe what they are being told It is knowledge-first in that it grounds entitlement in knowledge norms

NO REASON TO GO WEAK
Goldberg’s socially extended entitlement
Graham’s filtering requirement
Greco’s social roles
BURGE’S A PRIORI DERIVATION
THREE WAYS TO READ THE SOURCE PROBLEM
The reliability reading
SP as a problem of cooperation
Enlightened self-interest
Testimonial contractarianism
CONCLUSION
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