The epistemological authority of testimony 1 (original) (raw)
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Information, 2019
We will sketch the debate on testimony in social epistemology by reference to the contemporary debate on reductionism/anti-reductionism, communitarian epistemology and inferentialism. Testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge we share and it is worthy to be considered in the ambit of a dialogical perspective, which requires a description of a formal structure, which entails deontic statuses and deontic attitudes. In particular, we will argue for a social reformulation of the "space of reasons", which establishes a fruitful relationship with the epistemological view of Wilfrid Sellars.
The Social Character of Testimonial Knowledge
The Journal of Philosophy, 2000
Through communication, we form beliefs about the world, its history, others and ourselves. A vast proportion of these beliefs we count as knowledge. We seem to possess this knowledge only because it has been communicated. If those justifications that depended on communication were outlawed, all that would remain would be body of illsupported prejudice. The recognition of our ineradicable dependence on testimony for much of what we take ourselves to know has suggested to many that an epistemological account of testimony should be essentially similar to accounts of perception and memory. This premise I want to dispute. Most would deny that perceptual knowledge is mediated. The acquisition of knowledge through communication is mediated in one obvious sense. In a case of successful perception, one knows that the world is a certain way because one is aware of the world being that way. But if we come to know that the world is a certain way through communication, we have no comparable awareness of how the world is. We know that the world is a certain way only because another has represented the world as being that way. As such, our acquisition of knowledge can depend on why the speaker represented the world to be that way and whether or not the speaker knows that the world is how he represented it to be. Thus testimony is mediated in the sense that the intentions of
Epistemic Authority, Testimony and the Transmission of Knowledge
Episteme, 2007
I present an account of what it is to trust a speaker, and argue that the account can explain the common intuitions which structure the debate about the transmission view of testimony. According to the suggested account, to trust a speaker is to grant her epistemic authority on the asserted proposition, and hence to see her opinion as issuing a second order, preemptive reason for believing the proposition. The account explains the intuitive appeal of the basic principle associated with the transmission view of testimony: the principle according to which, a listener can normally obtain testimonial knowledge that p by believing a speaker who testifies that p only if the speaker knows that p. It also explains a common response to counterexamples to this principle: that these counterexamples do not involve normal cases of testimonial knowledge.
Trusting others. The epistemological authority of testimony
THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History …, 2008
ABSTRACT: I propose to consider the interpersonal character of testimony as a kind of social bond created by the mutual intention of sharing knowledge. The paper explores the social mechanism that supports this mutual intention starting from an initial situation of modelling the other's ...
Testimony as a Social Foundation of Knowledge
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2011
Testimony is the mainstay of human communication and essential for the spread of knowledge. But testimony may also spread error. Under what conditions does it yield knowledge in the person addressed? Must the recipient trust the attester? And does the attester have to know what is affirmed? A related question is what is required for the recipient to be justified in believing testimony. Is testimony-based justification acquired in the same way as testimony-based knowledge? This paper addresses these and other questions. It offers a theory of the role of testimony in producing knowledge and justification, a sketch of a conception of knowledge that supports this theory, a brief account of how trust of others can be squared with critical habits of mind, and an outline of some important standards for intellectual responsibility in giving and receiving testimony. 1 The suggested broad notion of testimony seems to be the one many use; see, e.g.,
Trusting others. The epistemological authority of testimony”. This volume
2008
ABSTRACT: I propose to consider the interpersonal character of testimony as a kind of social bond created by the mutual intention of sharing knowledge. The paper explores the social mechanism that supports this mutual intention starting from an initial situation of modelling the other’s epistemic perspective. Accepting testi-mony as a joint action creates epistemic duties and responsibilities and the eventual success can be consid-ered as a genuine achievement at the social level of epistemology. Trust is presented here as the symptom that both parties are involved in such a social bond.
This is an early, alternative version of the paper that became Shieber 2013, “Toward a truly social epistemology: Babbage, the division of mental labor, and the possibility of socially distributed warrant,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86(2), pp. 266-294. This paper differs from the later paper in a few notable respects. In this earlier paper – written in 2008-9 – I use Hutchins to illustrate the phenomenon of socially distributed cognitive processes, rather than Babbage, and I discuss the attributes of such cognitive processes in greater detail.
Oral history and the epistemology of testimony
Uncorrected penultimate draft, forthcoming in Social Epistemology oral historiography hold for the epistemology of testimony. No doubt there are many such lessons, but I will divide my focus between one negative lesson and a collection of positive ones suggested by a reading of some seminal work in the historiography of oral traditions. The negative lesson arises from an idea advanced by C. A.J. Coady (1992): that expert oral historians treat testimony with a default trust, and that this suggests a standing epistemic warrant for the acceptance of testimony even when independent supporting evidence is unavailable. This idea is not supported by the reflective views on oral historiography expressed by some influential writers in the field (including those cited in its favor). So I reject it. Rather, oral history and its methods are valuable for directing our attention to underemphasized aspects of testimonial contexts and the uses of testimony. This is where the positive lessons come in. Oral history, in the broadest sense, highlights the extent to which the epistemic value of testimony is a function of the ways in which testimonial contexts are actively constructed by speakers, audiences, institutions and whole societies. It also indicates the epistemological importance of social, cognitive and epistemic properties of the audience, when much philosophical focus has typically been on properties of the testifier. And it introduces a wider range of respects in which testimony is truth-conducive than the fairly limited sense generally emphasized in the philosophical literature. These lessons are of course defeasible; they are drawn from a partial survey of a large interdisciplinary literature, and apply only to some extent or other. But they hold out the promise of a broader and more empirically informed approach to testimony. The epistemology of testimony currently suffers from a degree of 4 oversimplification; oral history, I argue, is one important source of relevant salutary complications.