Epistemic trust is crucial for science. This article aims to identify the kinds of assumptions that are involved in epistemic trust as it is required for the successful operation of science as a collective epistemic enterprise. The relevant kind of reliance should involve working from the assumption that the epistemic endeavors of others are appropriately geared towards the truth, but the exact content of this assumption is more difficult to analyze than it might appear. (...) The root of the problem is that methodological decisions in science typically involve a complex trade-off between the reliability of positive results, the reliability of negative results, and the investigation's power. Which balance between these is the ‘correct’ one can only be determined in light of an evaluation of the consequences of all the different possible outcomes of the inquiry. What it means for the investigation to be ‘appropriately geared towards the truth’ thus depends on certain value judgments. I conclude that in the optimal case, trusting someone in her capacity as an information provider also involves a reliance on her having the right attitude towards the possible consequences of her epistemic work. 1 Introduction2 Epistemic Reliance within the Sciences3 Methodological Conventionalism4 Trust in Science5 Conclusions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that epistemic trust is an intellectual virtue. First, I offer a brief analysis of what it means to place epistemic trust in someone involving several components: belief, communication, dependence, and confidence. I show this account of trust fits a major approach to virtue in the second section. Next, I argue that epistemic trust both contributes to the epistemic good life and that the paradigmatically rational or virtuous agent (...) will include trust in her motivational structure. Considerations from both the structure and meta-epistemology of virtues give us excellent grounds to accept that such a trait is an epistemic virtue. Following these arguments, I discuss a few implications of the view. Epistemic trust will be a mean between two vices of credulity and suspiciousness but that mean will be sensitive to the agent’s particular epistemic context. The view is not evidentialist (for good trust is not defined solely in terms of evidence) but it does account for the role evidence often plays in good epistemic trust (since other virtues relevant to the obtaining and weighing of evidence must be in operation). Finally, I apply the view to three issues in epistemology: the problem of easy or low grade knowledge, testimony, and disagreement; arguing that we’re provided with interesting, fruitful ways of approaching them. (shrink)

Where there is trust, there is also vulnerability, and vulnerability can be exploited. Epistemic trust is no exception. This chapter maps the phenomenon of the exploitation of epistemic trust. I start with a discussion of how trust in general can be exploited; a key observation is that trust incurs vulnerabilities not just for the party doing the trusting, but also for the trustee (after all, trust can be burdensome), so either party can (...) exploit the other. I apply these considerations to epistemic trust, specifically in testimonial relationships. There, we standardly think of a hearer trusting a speaker. But we miss an important aspect of this relationship unless we consider too that the speaker standardly trusts the hearer. Given this mutual trust, and given that both trustees and trusters can exploit each other, we have four possibilities for exploitation in epistemic-trust relationships: a speaker exploiting a hearer (a) by accepting his trust or (b) by imposing her trust on him, and a hearer exploiting a speaker (c) by accepting her trust or (d) by imposing his trust on her. One result is that you do not need to betray someone to exploit him – you can exploit him just as easily by doing what he trusts you for. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a distinctive epistemic rationale for the liberal practice of constant and ostentatious reason-giving in the political context. Epistemic trust is essential to democratic governance because as citizens we can only make informed decisions by relying on the claims of moral, scientific, and practical authorities around us. Yet rational epistemic trust is also uniquely fragile in the political context in light of both the radical inclusiveness of the relevant epistemic community (...) (i.e., everyone who participates in the political process) and the conflicting interests bound up in policy debate. I argue that liberal justification is a necessary condition for warranted epistemic trust in this context, and therefore a necessary condition for healthy public inquiry about politically significant questions. (shrink)

Much of the literature concerning epistemic injustice has focused on the variety of harms done to socially marginalized persons in their capacities as potentialcontributorsto knowledge projects. However, in order to understand the full implications of the social nature of knowing, we must confront the circulation of knowledge and the capacity of epistemic agents to take up knowledge produced by others and make use of it. I argue that members of socially marginalized lay communities can sufferepistemic trust injusticeswhen (...) potentially powerful forms of knowing such as scientific understandings are generated in isolation from them, and when the social conditions required for aresponsibly-placed trustto be formed relative to the relevant epistemic institutions fail to transpire. (shrink)

Publics trust experts for personal and pro-social reasons. Scientists are among the experts publics trust most, and so, epistemic trust is routinely afforded to them. The call for epistemic trust to be more socially situated in order to account for the impact of science on society and public welfare is at the forefront of enhanced epistemic trust. I argue that the value-free ideal for science challenges establishing enhanced epistemic trust by (...) preventing the inclusion of non-epistemic values throughout the evaluation of evidence and communication of these values. By selectively silencing non-epistemic values, the ideal cannot take into account publics’ social and moral responses to inductive risk, which are instrumental for defining and determining public welfare. Furthermore, by emphasising epistemic values almost exclusively in science education and communication, the value-free ideal is presented to publics in such a way that it becomes a social indicator of trust. I show this through examination of the importance of values in decisions to trust, and conclude that values (and restrictions on them) can be used by lay publics to help decide which experts to trust. (shrink)

Epistemic trust is an unacknowledged feature of medical knowledge. Claims of medical knowledge made by physicians, patients, and others require epistemic trust. And yet, it would be foolish to define all epistemic trust as epistemically responsible. Accordingly, I use a routine example in medical practice to illustrate how epistemically responsible trust in medicine is trust in epistemically responsible individuals. I go on to illustrate how certain areas of current medical practice of medicine (...) fall short of adequately distinguishing reliable and unreliable processes because of a failure to systematically evaluate health outcomes. I conclude by articulating the devastating obstacles to the consilience assumption, which takes intellectual character as the standard for epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

Epistemic trustworthiness is defined as a complex character state that supervenes on a relation between first- and second-order beliefs, including beliefs about others as epistemic agents. In contexts shaped by unjust power relations, its second-order components create a mutually supporting link between a deficiency in epistemic character and unjust epistemic exclusion on the basis of group membership. In this way, a deficiency in the virtue of epistemic trustworthiness plays into social/epistemic interactions that perpetuate social (...) injustice. Overcoming that deficiency and, along with it, normalized practices of epistemic exclusion, requires developing a self-critical perspective on the partial, socially-located character of one's perspective and the consequent epistemic value of inclusiveness. (shrink)

Epistemic trust figures prominently in our socio-cognitive practices. By assigning different degrees of competence to agents, we distinguish between experts and novices and determine the trustworthiness of testimony. This paper probes the claim that epistemic trust furthers our epistemic enterprise. More specifically, it assesses the veritistic value of competence attribution in an epistemic community, i.e., in a group of agents that collaboratively seek to track down the truth. The results, obtained by simulating opinion dynamics, (...) tend to subvert the very idea that competence ascription is essential for the functioning of epistemic collaboration and hence veritistically valuable. On the contrary, we find that, in specific circumstances at least, epistemic trust may prevent a community from finding the truth effectively. (shrink)

The value of epistemic trust has been neglected, as Townsley rightly observes, but I think a virtue epistemology of the kind I endorse is well suited to provide a framework for understanding it. The Cassandra of Greek legend illustrates the complex relationships among epistemic and non-epistemic goods, as well as the fragility of knowledge. I think her case leads us to a more radical conclusion than the one Townsley proposes.

Based on an empirical study of a research team in natural science, the author argues that collaborating scientists do not trust each other completely. Due to the inherent incompleteness of trust, epistemic trust among scientists is not sufficient to manage epistemic dependency in research teams. To mitigate the limitations of epistemic trust, scientists resort to specific strategies of indirect assessment such as dialoguing practices and the probing of explanatory responsiveness. Furthermore, they rely upon (...) impersonal trust and deploy practices of hierarchical authorship. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the nature of epistemic trust. With increased philosophical attention to social epistemology in general and testimony in particular, the role for an epistemic or intellectual version of trust has loomed large in recent debates. But, too often, epistemologists talk about trust without really providing a sustained examination of the concept. After some introductory comments, I begin by addressing various components key to trust simpliciter. In particular, I examine what (...) we might think of when we consider what it means to place trust in someone. Once we have examined trust in general, we can modify this discussion to derive an epistemic version of trust—placing trust in someone for an epistemic reason. I argue that ET includes four components: belief, communication, reliance, and confidence. The first two sets are distinctively epistemic and the second set of conditions form the core of any kind of trust. Put together,.. (shrink)

Epistemic trust figures prominently in our socio-cognitive practices. By assigning different degrees of competence to agents, we distinguish between experts and novices and determine the trustworthiness of testimony. This paper probes the claim that epistemic trust furthers our epistemic enterprise. More specifically, it assesses the veritistic value of competence attribution in an epistemic community, i.e., in a group of agents that collaboratively seek to track down the truth. The results, obtained by simulating opinion dynamics, (...) tend to subvert the very idea that competence ascription is essential for the functioning of epistemic collaboration and hence veritistically valuable. On the contrary, we find that, in specific circumstances at least, epistemic trust may prevent a community from finding the truth effectively. (shrink)

There is an enigma that plagues the modern world. On the one hand, access to information is more abundant than ever. On the other, knowledge seems all the more difficult to come by. The world is divided on numerous fact-based questions regarding nutrition, exercise, public policy impact, sickness prevention, mental wellness, and more. What accounts for this phenomenon? Likely, these disagreements and difficulties cannot be accounted for by a single factor, and the elements in play vary from question to question (...) and subject to subject. This paper will focus on one possible factor: eroding trust in subject matter experts. (shrink)

Intellectual humility has something important in common with trust: both, independently, help secure knowledge. But they also do so in tandem, and this chapter discusses how. Intellectual humility is a virtue of a person’s cognitive character; this means that it disposes her to perceive and think in certain ways that help promote knowledge. Trust is a form of cooperation, in which one person depends on another (or on herself) for some end, in a way that is governed by (...) certain norms. Epistemic trust is trust for epistemic ends, where the one that I will focus on here is knowledge. When the parties to an epistemic-trust relationship exhibit intellectual humility, I will argue, they are in a better position than otherwise to secure knowledge. Some think that this is true trivially, on the grounds that knowledge (on their view) is constituted by the exercise of epistemic virtues. Whether or not this is so, I will focus on two different ways in which intellectual humility makes epistemic trust knowledge-conducive: first, it equips trusters to invest trust effectively – that is, in those who are trustworthy; second, it equips trustees to be epistemically trustworthy. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker has introduced the insightful notion of epistemic injustice in the philosophical debate, thus bridging concerns of social epistemology with questions that arise in the area of social and cultural studies. I concentrate my analysis of her treatment of testimonial injustice. According to Fricker, the central cases of testimonial injustice are cases of identity injustice in which hearers rely on stereotypes to assess the credibility of their interlocutors. I try here to broaden the analysis of that testimonial injustice (...) by indicating other mechanisms that bias our credibility assessments. In my perspective, the use of identity stereotypes is just one case among many biases in our credibility judgments. (shrink)

The evidence most of us have for our beliefs on global climate change, the extent of human contribution to it, and appropriate anticipatory and mitigating actions turns crucially on epistemic trust. We extend trust or distrust to many varied others: scientists performing original research, intergovernmental agencies and those reviewing research, think tanks offering critique and advocating skepticism, journalists transmitting and interpreting claims, even social systems of modern science such as peer-reviewed publication and grant allocation. Our personal experiences (...) and assessments of evidential indicators themselves may be buttressed significantly by trust, not just in. (shrink)

Focusing on imagination and the social context in the generation of conviction narratives, we propose that these elements are dynamically related to one another, and crucially that it is the nature of this relationship that determines individuals' level of epistemic openness and capacity to respond adaptively to update their narratives in a way that increases the possibility of more successful decision-making.

This paper motivates institutional epistemic trust as an important ethical consideration informing the responsible development and implementation of AI technologies (or AI- Inclusivity) in healthcare. Drawing on recent literature on epistemic trust and public trust in science, we examine the conditions under which we can have institutional epistemic trust in AI- inclusive healthcare systems and their members' medical information providers. In particular, we discuss that institutional epistemic trust in AI-inclusive healthcare depends, (...) in part, on the reliability of AI-inclusive medical practices and programs, its knowledge and understanding amongst different stakeholders, its effect on epistemic and communicative duties and burdens on medical professionals, and finally, its interaction with ethical values and interests as well as background socio-political conditions which shape AI-inclusive healthcare systems. To assess the applicability of these conditions, we explore a proposal for AI-inclusivity within the Dutch Newborn Screening Program, thereby illustrating the importance, scope, and potential challenges of fostering and maintaining institutional epistemic trust in a context where generating, assessing, and providing reliable and timely screening results for genetic risk is of high priority. Finally, to motivate the general relevance of our discussion and case study, we provide suggestions for strategies, interventions, and measures for AI-inclusivity in healthcare more widely. (shrink)

There is a widely recognized dilemma of political epistemic trust. While the public needs to rely on the testimonies of epistemic authorities (e.g. politicians, policymakers, and scientists), it is risky to do so. One source of risk is self-interest. Epistemic authorities are prone to abuse the trust placed in them by misinforming the public for material and social gain. To reap the benefits of trust and mitigate the risk of abuse, liberal political theorists adopt (...) the strategy of cultivating vigilant trust. By enhancing epistemic vigilance and epistemic autonomy, trust is both constrained and intellectualized. This chapter rejects this strategy for two reasons. First, it is undesirable. By over-intellectualizing trust, such an approach deprives trust of its important epistemic and social benefits. Second, it is unnecessary. The risk of abuse is exaggerated. The strategy fails to appreciate that epistemic authorities in virtue of their social roles are typically governed by the social norm of epistemic trustworthiness, not self-interest. The chapter concludes by suggesting an alternative strategy of cultivating trustworthiness. It seeks to strengthen epistemic authorities’ responsiveness to the social norm of epistemic trustworthiness, thereby improving epistemic trust without over-intellectualizing it. It is further outlined how liberal-democratic institutions can implement it. (shrink)

What is the nature of children's trust in testimony? Is it based primarily on evidential correlations between statements and facts, as stated by Hume, or does it derive from an interest in the trustworthiness of particular speakers? In this essay, we explore these questions in an effort to understand the developmental course and cognitive bases of children's extensive reliance on testimony. Recent work shows that, from an early age, children monitor the reliability of particular informants, differentiate between those who (...) make true and false claims and keep that differential accuracy in mind when evaluating new information from these people. We argue that this selective trust is likely to involve the mentalistic appraisal of speakers rather than surface generalizations of their behavior. Finally, we review the significance of children's deference to adult authority on issues of naming and categorization. In addition to challenging a purely inductive account of trust, these and other findings reflect a potentially rich set of tools brought by children to the task of learning from people's testimony. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat is the nature of children's trust in testimony? Is it based primarily on evidential correlations between statements and facts, as stated by Hume, or does it derive from an interest in the trustworthiness of particular speakers? In this essay, we explore these questions in an effort to understand the developmental course and cognitive bases of children's extensive reliance on testimony. Recent work shows that, from an early age, children monitor the reliability of particular informants, differentiate between those who (...) make true and false claims and keep that differential accuracy in mind when evaluating new information from these people. We argue that this selective trust is likely to involve the mentalistic appraisal of speakers rather than surface generalizations of their behavior. Finally, we review the significance of children's deference to adult authority on issues of naming and categorization. In addition to challenging a purely inductive account of trust, these and other findings reflect a potentially rich set of tools brought by children to the task of learning from people's testimony. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of science have been prominent amongst social epistemologists who draw attention to communal aspects of knowing. As part of this work, I focus on the need to examine the relations between scientific communities and lay communities, particularly marginalized communities, for understanding the epistemic merit of scientific practices. I draw on Naomi Scheman's argument (2001) that science earns epistemic merit by rationally grounding trust across social locations. Following this view, more turns out to be relevant to (...) epistemic assessment than simply following the standards of "normal science". On such an account, philosophers of science need to attend to the relations between scientific communities and various lay communities, especially marginalized communities, to understand how scientific practices can rationally ground trust and thus earn their status as "good ways of knowing". Trust turns out to involve a wide set of expectations on behalf of lay communities. In this paper I focus on expectations of knowledge sharing, using examples of "knowledge-sharing whistleblowers" to illustrate how failures in knowledge sharing with lay communities can erode epistemic trust in scientific communities, particularly in the case of marginalized communities. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of how it can be possible for a non-expert to acquire justified true belief from expert testimony. We discuss reductionism and epistemic trust as theoretical approaches to answer this question and present a novel solution that avoids major problems of both theoretical options: Performative Expert Testimony. PET draws on a functional account of expertise insofar as it takes the expert’s visibility as a good informant capable to satisfy informational needs as equally (...) important as her specific skills and knowledge. We explain how PET generates justification for testimonial belief, which is at once assessable for non-experts and maintains the division of epistemic labor between them and the experts. Thereafter we defend PET against two objections. First, we point out that the non-expert’s interest in acquiring widely assertable true beliefs and the expert’s interest in maintaining her status as a good informant counterbalances the relativist account of justification at work in PET. Second, we show that with regard to the interests at work in testimonial exchanges between experts and non-experts, PET yields a better explanation of knowledge-acquisition from expert testimony than externalist accounts of justification such as reliabilism. As our arguments ground in a conception of knowledge, which conceives of belief-justification as a declarative speech act, throughout the rearmost sections of this paper we also indicate to how such a conception is operationalized in PET. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of how it can be possible for a non-expert to acquire justified true belief from expert testimony. We discuss reductionism and epistemic trust as theoretical approaches to answer this question and present a novel solution that avoids major problems of both theoretical options: Performative Expert Testimony (PET). PET draws on a functional account of expertise insofar as it takes the expert’s visibility as a good informant capable to satisfy informational needs as (...) equally important as her specific skills and knowledge. We explain how PET generates justification for testimonial belief, which is at once assessable for non-experts and maintains the division of epistemic labor between them and the experts. Thereafter we defend PET against two objections. First, we point out that the non-expert’s interest in acquiring widely assertable true beliefs and the expert’s interest in maintaining her status as a good informant counterbalances the relativist account of justification at work in PET. Second, we show that with regard to the interests at work in testimonial exchanges between experts and non-experts, PET yields a better explanation of knowledge-acquisition from expert testimony than externalist accounts of justification such as reliabilism. As our arguments ground in a conception of knowledge, which conceives of belief-justification as a declarative speech act, throughout the rearmost sections of this paper we also indicate to how such a conception is operationalized in PET. (shrink)

Alvin Goldman develops the concept of “core voter knowledge” to capture the kind of knowledge that voters need to have in order that democracy function successfully. As democracy is supposed to promote the people's goals, core voter knowledge must, according to Goldman, first and foremost answer the question which electoral candidate would successfully perform in achieving that voter's ends. In our paper we challenge this concept of core voter knowledge from different angles. We analyse the dimensions of political trustworthiness and (...) their relevance for the voter; we contrast two alternative orientations that the voter might take—an “outcome-orientation” and a “process-orientation”; and we discuss how an expressive account of voting behaviour would shift the focus in regard to the content of voter knowledge. Finally, we discuss some varieties of epistemic trust and their relevance for the availability, acquisition and dissemination of voter knowledge in a democracy. (shrink)

This research investigated how interpersonal communication with a large audience can influence communicators’ attitudes. Research on the saying-is-believing effect has shown that when an individual’s attitude is perceived in advance by a communicator, the communicator tunes the message to the person, which biases the communicator’s attitude toward the person’s attitude. In this study, we examined the conditions under which audience tuning and attitude bias can occur with audiences containing more than one individual. We manipulated communicators’ perceived group entity for a (...) large audience and the audience’s prior attitudinal valence and measured the audience’s epistemic trust. The results showed that communicators tuned their messages to the audience’s attitude when they perceived group entitativity and epistemic trust. Furthermore, tuning the message to the audience was found to bias communicators’ subsequent impressions of the topic in a direction closer to the audience’s attitude. These results suggest that perceiving a large audience as a group influences the subsequent impressions of electronic word-of-mouth product or service communicators. (shrink)

In this book Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of (...) authority of Joseph Raz. These principles apply to authority in the moral and religious domains. (shrink)

I analyze the relation between deliberative democracy and trust through the lens of epistemic justice. I argue for three main claims: (i) the deliberative impasse dividing majority and minority groups in many democracies is due to a particular type of epistemic injustice, which I call ‘hermeneutical domination’; (ii) undoing hermeneutical domination requires epistemic trust; and (iii) this epistemic trust is supported by the three deliberative democratic requirements of equality, legitimacy, and accountability. In arguing (...) for those claims, I contribute to the conceptualization of both epistemic injustice and domination, as well as to discussions of trust and deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Much of what we know we know through testimony, and knowing on the basis of testimony requires some degree of trust in speakers. Trust is therefore very valuable. But in trusting, we expose ourselves to risks of harm and betrayal. It is therefore important to trust well. In this paper, I discuss two recent cases of the betrayal of trust in (broadly) academic contexts: one involving hoax submissions to journals, the other faking an identity on social (...) media. I consider whether these betrayals suggest that we ought to be less trusting in contexts like these. I argue that we should not: the acquisition of knowledge is dependent on trust, and we cannot intentionally reduce the extent to which we trust in these kinds of contexts without risking destroying it utterly. Instead, we must trust in our epistemic networks and the way they work to filter out deception. (shrink)

The recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement focuses on the rational response question: how are you rationally required to respond to a doxastic disagreement with someone, especially with someone you take to be your epistemic peer? A doxastic disagreement with someone also confronts you with a slightly different question. This question, call it the epistemic trust question, is: how much should you trust our own epistemic faculties relative to the epistemic faculties of others? (...) Answering the epistemic trust question is important for the epistemology of disagreement because it sheds light on the rational response question. My main aim in this paper is to argue—against recent attempts to show otherwise—that epistemic self-trust does not provide a reason for remaining steadfast in doxastic disagreements with others. (shrink)

What is epistemic self-trust? There is a tension in the way in which prominent accounts answer this question. Many construe epistemic trust in oneself as no more than reliance on our sub-personal cognitive faculties. Yet many accounts – often the same ones – construe epistemic trust in others as a normatively laden attitude directed at persons whom we expect to care about our epistemic needs. Is epistemic self-trust really so different from (...) epistemic trust in others? I argue that it is not. We certainly do rely on our cognitive faculties to achieve epistemic ends; but I argue that we also have the normatively rich sort of epistemic trust in ourselves. Moreover, there is a theoretical need for this normatively rich notion of epistemic self-trust: positing it yields the best account of how we secure important epistemic goods, including knowledge and recognition as knowers. I argue this by giving an account of epistemic trust in others and showing that it can be generalized to epistemic trust in oneself. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Miranda Fricker has characterized epistemic injustice as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (2007, Epistemic injustice: Power & the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20). Gaslighting, where one agent seeks to gain control over another by undermining the other’s conception of herself as an independent locus of judgment and deliberation, would thus seem to be a paradigm example. Yet, in the most thorough analysis of gaslighting (...) to date (Abramson, K. 2014. “Turning up the lights on gaslighting.” Philosophical Perspectives 28, Ethics: 1–30), the idea that gaslighting has crucial epistemic dimensions is rather roundly rejected on grounds that gaslighting works by means of a strategy of assertion and manipulation that is not properly understood in epistemic terms. I argue that Abramson’s focus on the gaslighter and on the moral wrongness of his actions leads her to downplay ways in which gaslighters nevertheless deploy genuinely epistemic strategies, and to devote less attention to the standpoint and reasoning processes of the victim, for whom the experience of gaslighting has substantial and essential epistemic features. Taking these features into account reveals that all gaslighting has epistemic dimensions and helps to clarify what resistance to gaslighting might look like. (shrink)

This chapter explores properties that bind individuals, knowledge, and communities, together. Section ‎‎1 introduces Hardwig’s argument from trust in others’ testimonies as entailing that trust is the glue ‎that binds individuals into communities. Section 2 asks “what grounds trust?” by exploring assessment ‎of collaborators’ explanatory responsiveness, formal indicators such as affiliation and credibility, ‎appreciation of peers’ tacit knowledge, game-theoretical considerations, and the role moral character ‎of peers, social biases, and social values play in grounding trust. Section (...) 3 deals with establishing ‎reliability standards for formation and breaching of trust. Different epistemic considerations and their ‎underpinning of inductive risks are examined through various communication routes within a ‎discipline, between disciplines, and to the public. Section 4 examines whether a collective entity can ‎be trusted over and above trust that is given to its individual members. Section 5 deals with the roles ‎technological artifacts play in distributed research and collective knowledge. It presents the common ‎view in which genuine trust cannot, in principle, be accorded to artifacts, so as an opposite view. We ‎show that what counts as a genuine object of trust is relevant to debates about the boundaries of ‎collective agency and as a criterion for extended cognitive systems.‎. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMiranda Fricker has characterized epistemic injustice as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (2007, Epistemic injustice: Power & the e...

Trust is central to the therapeutic relationship, but the epistemic asymmetries between the expert healthcare provider and the patient make the patient, the trustor, vulnerable to the provider, the trustee. The narratives of pain sufferers provide helpful insights into the experience of pain at the juncture of trust, expert knowledge, and the therapeutic relationship. While stories of pain sufferers having their testimonies dismissed are well documented, pain sufferers continue to experience their testimonies as being epistemically downgraded. This (...) kind of epistemic injustice has received limited treatment in bioethics. In this paper, we examine how a climate of distrust in pain management may facilitate what Fricker calls epistemic injustice. We critically interrogate the processes through which pain sufferers are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, such as testimonial injustice. We also examine how healthcare institutions and practices privilege some kinds of evidence and ways of knowing while excluding certain patient testimonies from epistemic consideration. We argue that providers ought to avoid epistemic injustice in pain management by striving toward epistemic humility. Epistemic humility, as a form of epistemic justice, may be the kind disposition required to correct the harmful prejudices that may arise through testimonial exchange in chronic pain management. (shrink)

Trust is central to the therapeutic relationship, but the epistemic asymmetries between the expert healthcare provider and the patient make the patient, the trustor, vulnerable to the provider, the trustee. The narratives of pain sufferers provide helpful insights into the experience of pain at the juncture of trust, expert knowledge, and the therapeutic relationship. While stories of pain sufferers having their testimonies dismissed are well documented, pain sufferers continue to experience their testimonies as being epistemically downgraded. This (...) kind of epistemic injustice has received limited treatment in bioethics. In this paper, we examine how a climate of distrust in pain management may facilitate what Fricker calls epistemic injustice. We critically interrogate the processes through which pain sufferers are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, such as testimonial injustice. We also examine how healthcare institutions and practices privilege some kinds of evidence and ways of knowing while excluding certain patient testimonies from epistemic consideration. We argue that providers ought to avoid epistemic injustice in pain management by striving toward epistemic humility. Epistemic humility, as a form of epistemic justice, may be the kind disposition required to correct the harmful prejudices that may arise through testimonial exchange in chronic pain management. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the epistemology of trust and testimony should take into account the pragmatics of communication in order to gain insight about the responsibilities speakers and hearers share in the epistemic access they gain through communication. Communication is a rich process of information exchange in which epistemic standards are negotiated by interlocutors. I discuss examples which show the contextual adjustment of these standards as the conversation goes on. Our sensitivity to the contextual dimension (...) of epistemic standards make us more responsible communicators. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that the therapeutic relationship between professionals and patients is one of trust. Nonetheless, some patient groups carry certain social vulnerabilities that can be exacerbated when they extend trust to health-care professionals. In exploring the epistemic and ethical implications of expert status, this paper examines how calls to trust may increase epistemic oppression and perpetuate the vulnerability of people with impairments. It critically evaluates the processes through which epistemic communities are formed (...) or determined, and examines the institutional structure and power relations that contribute to or sustain such self-affirming ideological communities. It also argues for a two-way collaborative approach between professionals and people with impairments that recognizes the role of local knowledge in enhancing professionals’ own understanding of their theoretical framework and promoting responsive practices and policies. (shrink)

We provide an analysis of the public's having warranted epistemic trust in science, that is, the conditions under which the public may be said to have well-placed trust in the scientists as providers of information. We distinguish between basic and enhanced epistemic trust in science and provide necessary conditions for both. We then present the controversy regarding the connection between autism and measles–mumps–rubella vaccination as a case study to illustrate our analysis. The realization of warranted (...) epistemic public trust in science requires various societal conditions, which we briefly introduce in the concluding section. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that entitlement theorists face a dilemma, the upshot of which is that entitlement theory is either unmotivated or incoherent. I begin with the question of how confident one should be in a proposition on the basis of an entitlement to trust, distinguishing between strong views that warrant certainty and weak views that warrant less than certainty. Strong views face the problem that they are incompatible with the ineliminable epistemic risk that is a feature (...) of the two main arguments in support of entitlement theory, the Strategic and Cognitive Project models. I then distinguish further between two types of weak views, arguing that both ultimately lead to condoning irrational doxastic attitudes. I end by considering whether entitlement theorists can avoid these issues by rejecting the assumption that entitlements to trust are warrants to adopt degrees of confidence. I argue that this strategy fails and note that entitlement theorists themselves explicitly endorse degree-of-confidence views. (shrink)

I develop a thin account of trust as trust-based reliance on an occasion. I argue that this thin notion describes the trust a recipient of testimony has in a speaker when she forms belief on his say-so. This basis for trusting belief in what one is told is also available to those who overhear and correctly understand the teller’s speech act. I contrast my account of trusting testimonial uptake with an alternative account that invokes a thicker notion: (...) reciprocal trust. This involves mutual awareness of their trusting relation between truster and trustee, and so is not available to mere overhearers of an utterance. Reciprocal trust involves norms to be trusting, and to be trustworthy. I explore how these second-personal norms make visible the possibility of an epistemology of testimony that includes second-personal reasons to trust a speaker’s testimony, ones that hold only for the addressee. Crucially, if the account of trust is a non-doxastic one—that is to say, trust does not analytically entail belief in trustworthiness—then this possibility arises without prior rejection of a core canon of mainstream epistemology: that only evidence can serve as grounds for belief. We find that non-doxastic testimonial trust has the potential to work epistemic magic: to enable one to reach justified beliefs that are not reachable except via second-personal trust in what one is told. But this result obtains only if trust is not only analytically possible without belief in trustworthiness, but can be justified by norms of trust when the latter would not be. My own account rejects this thesis, at least in the case of trusting a speaker as regards her utterance. But my analysis makes sense of the idea of second-personal reasons for testimonial belief, as posited by so-called ‘assurance theorists’ of testimony, and allows that debate to proceed further. (shrink)