Epistemology Of Testimony Research Articles

Internalism and Externalism in the Epistemology of Testimony

Internalism and Externalism in the Epistemology of Testimony

Toward a Truly Social Epistemology: Babbage, the Division of Mental Labor, and the Possibility of Socially Distributed Warrant

In what follows, I appeal to Charles Babbage’s discussion of the division of mental labor to provide evidence that—at least with respect to the social acquisition, storage, retrieval, and transmission of knowledge—epistemologists have, for a broad range of phenomena of crucial importance to actual knowers in their epistemic practices in everyday life, failed adequately to appreciate the significance of socially distributed cognition. If the discussion here is successful, I will have demonstrated that a particular presumption widely held within the contemporary discussion of the epistemology of testimony—a presumption that I will term the personalist requirement—fails to account for those very practices of knowers that I detail here. I will then conclude by suggesting that an alternate account of testimonial warrant, one that has heretofore been underappreciated, ought to be given more serious consideration—in particular because it is well suited to account for those actual practices of knowers that the personalist requirement leaves unrecognized.

Character and Knowledge: Learning from the Speech of Experts

This paper discusses the ways in which a person’s character (ethos) and a hearer’s emotional response (pathos) are part of the complex judgments made about experts’ claims, along with an actual assessment of those claims (logos). The analysis is rooted in the work of Aristotle, but expands to consider work on emotion and cognition conducted by Thagard and Gigerenzer. It also draws on some conclusions of the general epistemology of testimony (of which expert testimony is a special subset), where it is argued that we learn not just from the transmission of another’s beliefs, but from the words they speak. This shifts the onus in testimony away from the intentions of a speaker onto the judgments of an audience, capturing better its social character and reflecting our experience of receiving testimony. I conclude, however, that accepting the arguments of experts involves much more than simply believing what they say.

Applicazioni dell'epistemologia della testimonianza al caso dell'olocausto

The dual purpose of this paper is to examine whether the epistemology of testimony is useful in clarifying reflections on the Holocaust, and on the hand to employ the Holocaust as a test case for the epistemology of testimony in itself. In contrast to any form of epistemological individualism, I examine the epistemological problems and conditions that face both an historian (an indirect witness) and an ocular witness (a direct one). In this discussion, I will not be able to give precise answers to various questions, in particular concerning the relationship between these types of witnesses. I will conclude that although testimony requires truth of the proposition testified, lying seems better that telling the truth in cases where it is instrumental in saving many human life from the brutality of the Nazis. This conclusion is modest: while the epistemology of testimony can perhaps be of help in reflecting upon the Holocaust, it surely brings up more problems than what it can solve. Notwithstanding, I do not believe that the fault is with the epistemology of testimony, but rather that because of its extreme cruelty, inhumanity, and horror, it is too complex to say when a serious testimony about Holocaust is fully justified.

Reconsidering the role of inference to the best explanation in the epistemology of testimony

In his work on the epistemology of testimony, Peter Lipton developed an account of testimonial inference that aimed at descriptive adequacy as well as justificatory sophistication. According to ‘testimonial inference to the best explanation’ (TIBE), we accept what a speaker tells us because the truth of her claim figures in the best explanation of the fact that she made it. In this paper, I argue for a modification of this picture. In particular, I argue that IBE plays a dual role in the management and justification of testimony. On the one hand, the coherence and success of our testimony-based projects provides general abductive support for a default stance of testimonial acceptance; on the other hand, we are justified in rejecting specific testimonial claims whenever the best explanation of the instances of testimony we encounter entails, or makes probable, the falsity or unreliability of the testimony in question.

Dualism in the Epistemology of Testimony and the Ability Intuition

Dualism in the Epistemology of Testimony and the Ability Intuition

Comments on Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice

ABSTRACTMiranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice is a wide-ranging and important book on a much-neglected topic: the injustice involved in cases in which distrust arises out of prejudice. Fricker has some important things to say about this sort of injustice: its nature, how it arises, what sustains it, and the unhappy outcomes associated with it for the victim and the society in which it takes place. In the course of developing this account, Fricker also develops an account of the epistemology of testimony. Focusing my attention on that account, my central claims are two. First, at least some of Fricker's arguments against existing (inferentialist and non-inferentialist) views in the epistemology of testimony are less than fully persuasive, and the (non-inferentialist) view she ends up endorsing is not all that different from the views she criticizes. Second, her reasons for harboring doubts regarding the role of a principle of default entitlement within a non-inferentialist account are not persuasive. Neither of these claims affects the overall argument Fricker is trying to run. Rather, they suggest that Fricker may have picked more fights than she needed to in the epistemology of testimony. If so, we have reason to detach Fricker's important work on epistemic injustice from some of the details of the story she tells regarding the epistemology of testimony.

Kant and the Enlightenment's Contribution to Social Epistemology

ABSTRACTThe present paper argues for the relevance of Immanuel Kant and the German Enlightenment to contemporary social epistemology. Rather than distancing themselves from the alleged ‘individualism’ of Enlightenment philosophers, social epistemologists would be well-advised to look at the substantive discussion of social-epistemological questions in the works of Kant and other Enlightenment figures. After a brief rebuttal of the received view of the Enlightenment as an intrinsically individualist enterprise, this paper charts the historical trajectory of philosophical discussions of testimony as a source of knowledge, via such philosophers as C. Thomasius, C. A. Crusius, J. M. Chladenius, G. F. Meier, and finally Kant. Building on recent work on Kant's epistemology of testimony, the paper considers Kant's broader contributions to social epistemology. This includes an analysis of Kant's comments on the social basis of contingent epistemic standards, e.g. in the sciences, as well as on problems arising from the management of what Kant calls the growing ‘volume of knowledge’. Special attention is paid to the relation between Kant's views and contemporary problems arising both in the context of education and from our increased reliance on scientific experts.

Testimony and Kant’s Idea of Public Reason

It is common to interpret Kant’s idea of public reason and the Enlightenment motto to ‘think for oneself’ as incompatible with the view that testimony and judgement of credibility is essential to rational public deliberation. Such interpretations have led to criticism of contemporary Kantian approaches to deliberative democracy for being intellectualistic, and for not considering our epistemic dependence on other people adequately. In this article, I argue that such criticism is insufficiently substantiated, and that Kant’s idea of public reason is neither at odds with deference to a certain kind of authority, nor with making judgements of character in rational deliberation. This view is corroborated by recent work on Kant’s epistemology of testimony.

In defence of gullibility: the epistemology of testimony and the psychology of deception detection

Research in the psychology of deception detection implies that Fricker, in making her case for reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, overestimates both the epistemic demerits of the antireductionist policy of trusting speakers blindly and the epistemic merits of the reductionist policy of monitoring speakers for trustworthiness: folk psychological prejudices to the contrary notwithstanding, it turns out that monitoring is on a par (in terms both of the reliability of the process and of the sensitivity of the beliefs that it produces) with blind trust. The consequence is that while (a version of) Fricker’s argument for the necessity of a reduction succeeds, her argument for the availability of reductions fails. This does not, however, condemn us to endorse standard pessimistic reductionism, according to which there is no testimonial knowledge, for recent research concerning the methods used by subjects to discover deception in non-laboratory settings suggests that only a more moderate form of pessimism is in order.

The Epistemology of Testimony ‐ Edited by Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa

The Epistemology of Testimony ‐ Edited by Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa

Self-Incrimination and the Epistemology of Testimony

The United States Supreme Court's limitation of the privilege against self-incrimination to evidence of a testimonial nature has been controversial. The doctrinal reliance on a distinction between physical and testimonial evidence has proven difficult to apply in practice, and it has been criticized as being descriptively inaccurate, analytically incoherent, and normatively indefensible. This article offers a defense of the distinction on epistemological grounds. The philosophical focus on testimony as a source of knowledge provides some insight into what makes testimony distinct as an epistemic source. These considerations are used to provide a coherent and principled way to distinguish what evidence to treat as testimonial for Fifth Amendment purposes: any evidence that requires a fact-finder to rely on the epistemic authority of the defendant. This principle is then used to justify a testimonial privilege in light of the presumption of innocence and to clarify doctrine.

Il valore della testimonianza - The Value of Testimony

The following text is from my book Teoria della conoscenza published by Laterza some years ago. I have chosen to offer it here, in memory of my friend and colleague Flavio Baroncelli, for three basic reasons. First of all, more than twenty years ago, Flavio offered to be the supervisor of my graduate thesis on an epistemological theme in modern philosophy. I have not forgotten that possibility and have in recent times come to reflect upon both the type of epistemology and the philosophers that were beloved by Flavio. The text which follows these introductory remarks is a testament to this. Secondly, when he knew that I was interested in the epistemology of testimony, Flavio urged me to go on, because of the importance of that topic not only for general epistemology, but also for many other branches of philosophy. Thirdly, on the occasion of the publication of Teoria della conoscenza, Flavio participated on the round table in which it was presented to the public and had something like this to say: "I read the whole book with the same breath, as it was a detective story". In his memory, I cannot but hope to write other "detective stories".

Knowing from Testimony

AbstractTestimony is a vital and ubiquitous source of knowledge. Were we to refrain from accepting the testimony of others, our lives would be impoverished in startling and debilitating ways. Despite the vital role that testimony occupies in our epistemic lives, traditional epistemological theories have focused primarily on other sources, such as sense perception, memory, and reason, with relatively little attention devoted specifically to testimony. In recent years, however, the epistemic significance of testimony has been more fully appreciated. I shall here focus on two questions that have received the most attention in recent work in the epistemology of testimony. First, is testimonial knowledge acquired only by being transmitted from speaker to hearer? Second, must a hearer have positive reasons to justifiedly accept a speaker's testimony?

Re-thinking the Duplication of Speaker/Hearer Belief in the Epistemology of Testimony

ABSTRACTMost epistemologists of testimony assume that testifying requires that the beliefs to which speakers attest are identical to the beliefs that hearers accept. I argue that this characterization of testimony is misleading. Characterizing testimony in terms of duplicating speaker/hearer belief unduly resticts the variety of beliefs that might be accepted from speaker testimony.

Knowing Violence: Testimony, Trust and Truth

How do we know what violence is? And how do we acquire knowledge of violence? The key to these questions can be found in the epistemology of testimony. Testimonies of violence are first-person narratives of violence, therefore unless first-person narratives are recognized and legitimized as philosophically and epistemologically valuable, our knowledge of violence would be seriously compromised. The value of testimonies of violence lies in part in the transmission of truth-claims, but also crucially in the speech-act of giving a testimony. It is the latter that is the focus of this article. I will argue that the act of giving a testimony of violence, being listed to and believed, is essential for the survivor of violence in the process of rebuilding the sense of self and personhood in the aftermath of the violence endured.By looking at the work of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions worldwide, and highlighting in particular the role of trust within the dynamics of testimonies, I will argue that first-person testimonies of violence are also indispensable for another reason; namely, they prevent acts of violence from turning into instruments of epistemic injustice.Survivors of violence often find themselves being the victims of two forms of violence: apart from enduring the violence being afflicted on them, they also often suffer the epistemic injustice of being marginalized as credible sources of knowledge. Recognizing the validity of testimonies of violence in the form of first-person narratives of violence not only enables us to acquire knowledge of violence, but acknowledging the credibility of the narrator acts as a strong antidote to epistemic injustice.

George Campbell's Critique of Hume on Testimony

At stake in the dispute between Campbell and Hume is the basis for our acceptance of testimony. Campbell argues that, contrary to Hume, our acceptance of testimony is prior to experience, while Hume continues to maintain that the appropriation through testimony of the experience of others depends ultimately on one's own experience. I argue that Hume's remarks about testimony provide a non-circular account of the process by which the experience of others may become one's own; and I suggest that the view of Campbell and Hume as proponents of two radically opposed positions on the epistemology of testimony represents a considerable over-simplification.

A Defence of Quasi-reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony

Two key intuitions regarding knowledge are explored: that knowledge is a kind of cognitive achievement and that knowledge excludes luck. It is claimed that a proper understanding of how these intuitions should inform our conception of knowledge leads to some surprising results, not just as regards the theory of knowledge more generally but also as regards the epistemology of testimonial belief. In particular, it is argued that this conception of knowledge motivates a new kind of proposalquasi-reductionismthat can accommodate the motivations behind both reductionist and anti-reductionist accounts of the epistemology of testimony. 0. Here are two intuitions that many have regarding knowledge, and which inform much of our theorising about knowledge. The firstwhat I will call the achievement intuitionis that knowledge is a cognitive achievement of some sort. The secondwhat I will call the antiluck intuitionis that knowledge is incompatible with luck. It is tempting to think that these intuitions are just two sides of the same coin, or at least that once the intuitions are suitably fleshed out then we will come to see that the one intuition is simply an entailment of the other. For example, one might hold that achievements by their nature exclude luck in the relevant way and thus that the anti-luck intuition is simply a consequence of the achievement intuition. As I will show, however, this natural way of thinking about these two intuitions is mistaken, and this has important ramifications not only for our understanding of knowledge but also for our understanding of specifically testimonial knowledge. Indeed, I will claim that the intuition that knowledge is a type of cognitive achievement, while containing (like all intuitions) an important truth, is in fact wrong. As we will see, gaining an understanding of how these intuitions should inform our conception of knowledge will lead us to adopt a very

Testimony and the Infant/Child Objection

One of the central problems afflicting reductionism in the epistemology of testimony is the apparent fact that infants and small children are not cognitively capable of having the inductively based positive reasons required by this view. Since non-reductionism does not impose a requirement of this sort, it is thought to avoid this problem and is therefore taken to have a significant advantage over reductionism. In this paper, however, I argue that if this objection undermines reductionism, then a variant of it similarly undermines non-reductionism. Thus, considerations about the cognitive capacities of infants and small children do not effectively discriminate between these two competing theories of testimonial justification.

Telling as Inviting to Trust

How can I give you a reason to believe what I tell you? I can influence the evidence available to you. Or I can simply invite your trust. These two ways of giving reasons work very differently. When a speaker tells her hearer that p, I argue, she intends that he gain access to a prima facie reason to believe that p that derives not from evidence but from his mere understanding of her act. Unlike mere assertions, acts of telling give reasons directly. They give reasons by inviting the hearer's trust. This yields a novel form of anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony. The status of testimony as a sui generis source of epistemic warrant is entailed by the nature of the act of telling. We can discover the nature of this illocution, and its epistemic role, by examining how it functions in the real world of human relations.