Epistemic Self-Governance and Trust in the Word of Others: is there a Conflict (original) (raw)

2021, Epistemic Autonomy (Routledge Studies in Epistemology series)

forthcoming in Jon Matheson and Kirk Lougheed (eds.) Epistemic Autonomy (Routledge Studies in Epistemology series) 1. Practical and Epistemic Self-Governance and Trust Self-governance, being oneself in control of one's self and one's life, seems like a good thing, even an ideal to be aspired to. But the ability to enter into trusting relationships is also an important good of human life. We are social and emotional creatures, and a good human life involves cooperative and caring relationships with others. An indispensable part of these is allowing oneself to be dependent on others for various needs, and vulnerable to being harmed if others betray one's trust. So in the practical domain there is an opposition between self-governance and trust. A good human life will strike a suitable balance between retaining control oneself of how things that matter to one progress, and allowing delegation of this to trusted others; and it will find a suitable balance between emotional neediness and self-reliance. In the practical domain of action, and in one's personal and social life, self-governance is not an absolute unqualified good, but one to be traded off against the goods that come with dependence on others. But what about one's epistemic life? Is there a similar incompatibility between epistemic self-governance, maintaining responsibility oneself for one's beliefs, and trust in others? The trust here is about matters relating to acquiring knowledge, what we will call 'epistemic trust' 1 : most obviously, and the topic of this chapter, trust in others for what they tell us. 2 As I have argued in a previous paper, the supposed ideal of the autonomous knower-someone who never takes another's word on any topic, and only believes what she can find out through her own cognitive resources-is no such thing (see (Fricker 2006)). Each one of us (cognitively normal adult humans) is able to understand the limitations on what one can find out for oneself imposed by one's finite cognitive powers and restricted place in the world, and to appreciate the contrasted capacities and placing of others. And this understanding shows to one that, on many topics, others are in a position to know about them, and are better placed than oneself to know. So it is irrational not to accept another's word on a topic when one knows she is in such a superior epistemic position to oneself. In that previous paper I argued that believing on the basis of accepting another's testimony is consistent with maintaining responsibility for one's beliefs, and thus with epistemic self-governance, if one is discriminating in whom one trusts-if one believes what someone tells one only when one has good evidence of her honesty and competence on her topic. In this chapter I consolidate the thesis of that earlier paper. I first briefly discuss self-governance in relation to one's actions and desires (sect.2). I then propose that epistemic self-governance 1 On the account developed below epistemic trust has the same analysis as trust generally; it is distinguished by what it is trust for. Trust in a teller with respect to her utterance is epistemic firstly, in that one trusts the speaker to give one new knowledge; secondly, what one trusts in is the speaker's epistemic and character virtues as knower and communicator-one trusts her qua epistemic agent. 2 One trusts others in the dynamics of knowledge-generation when one delegates to them, or shares with them, the collection of data, conducting of experiments and so forth.