Fricker on testimonial justification (original) (raw)

Internalism in the Epistemology of Testimony Redux

In general, epistemic internalists hold that an individual’s justification for a belief is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons for thinking that the contents of her beliefs are true. Applying this to the epistemology of testimony, a hearer’s justification for beliefs acquired through testimony is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons to think that the contents of the speaker’s testimony is true. A consequence of internalism is that subjects that are alike with respect to their reflectively accessible reasons are alike with respect to what they have justification to believe. Testimony should be thought no different: hearers that are alike with respect to reflectively accessible reasons to think that a speaker’s testimony is true are alike with respect to their justification for beliefs based upon that testimony. But it has been recently argued that this view faces powerful counterexamples (Wright, 2015). So the central question is this: assuming that a hearer can acquire justification to believe a proposition through the testimony of a speaker, can epistemic internalism provide the resources to explain how such justification is possible? My aim in this paper is to address these counterexamples, and in so doing, defend epistemic internalist accounts of testimony.

On the Rationality of Our Response to Testimony

The assumption that we largely lack reasons for accepting testimony has dominated its epistemology. Given the further assumption that whatever reasons we do have are insufficient to justify our testimonial beliefs, many conclude that any account of testimonial knowledge must allow credulity to be justified. In this paper I argue that both of these assumptions are false. Our responses to testimony are guided by our background beliefs as to the testimony as a type, the testimonial situation, the testifier's character and the truth of the proposition testified to. These beliefs provide reasons for our responses. Thus, we usually do have reasons, in the sense of propositions believed, for accepting testimony and these reasons can provide evidence for the testimonial beliefs we form.

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 the present 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.

Lost in Transmission: Testimonial Justification and Practical Reason (Analysis) (with Eli Pitcovski)

Transmission views of testimony hold that the epistemic state of a speaker can, in some robust sense, be transmitted to their audience. That is, the speaker's knowledge or justification can become the audience's knowledge or justification via testimony. We argue that transmission views are incompatible with the hypothesis that one's epistemic state, together with one's practical circumstances (one's interests, stakes, ability to acquire new evidence etc.), determines what actions are rationally permissible for an agent. We argue that there are cases where, if the speaker's epistemic state were (in any robust sense) transmitted to the audience, then the audience would be warranted in acting in particular ways. Yet, the audience in these cases is not warranted in acting in the relevant ways, as their strength of justification does not come close to the speaker's. So transmission views of testimony are false.

Epistemic Free Riders and Reasons to Trust Testimony

Social Epistemology

Sinan Dogramaci has recently developed a view according to which epistemic evaluations -like calling someone's behavior 'rational' or 'irrational' -encourages or discourages the behavior evaluated. This view promises to explain the rational authority of testimony, by guaranteeing that, in the long run, epistemic procedures will be shared throughout a community. We argue that Dogramaci's view is unsatisfactory, for two reasons. First, the social practice at its heart is vulnerable to free riders. Second, even if the problem of free riders can be solved, it 'alienates' epistemic agents from the testimony that they receive, in that, though they will accept testimony from their fellows, they will have no reason to do so. We argue that a more satisfactory view can be had if we couple the genuine insights that are to be found in Dogramaci's proposal with the recognition that testimony is an excludible good that is often distributed according to market forces. It is this fact about testimony that discourages free riding, and, when coupled with an amended version of Dogramaci's view, provides agents with a reason to trust testimony.

Testimony and Non-Evidential Reasons for Belief (A Non-Purist Place for Interpersonalism)

EPISTEME, 2024

Interpersonalist theories of testimony have the theoretical virtue of giving room to the characteristic interpersonal features of testimonial exchange among persons. Nonetheless, it has been argued that they are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to accounting for the way in which testimonial beliefs may be epistemically justified. In this paper, we defend the epistemological credentials of interpersonalism, emphasizing that it is inseparable from the acceptance of non-evidential epistemic reasons to believe, which demands proper conceptual elaborations on the notions of epistemic reasons and of epistemic justification. We offer a proper reading of epistemic reason, and we defend non-purism on justification as the adequate way to conceive the epistemic proposal of interpersonalism on testimony, realizing that only this combination is capable of apprehending certain cases in which there seems to be no way to rule out the idea that the assurance offered by the testifier offers an epistemic reason to believe that it is not evidential.