Aesthetic testimony is testimony about aesthetic properties. For example, in aone straightforward case, one person might tell another that something is beautiful. Philosophical discussion about aesthetic testimony centers on the question of whether there are any important differences between aesthetic testimony and testimony about non-aesthetic descriptive matters. In particular, the focus is often on the respective epistemic credentials of aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony relative to firsthand judgments in the respective domains. Most are inclined to (...) think that in some way and to some degree we typically treat aesthetic testimony as being epistemically inferior to testimony about non-aesthetic matters. Assuming an asymmetry in the way we typically treat aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony, the philosophical debate then asks a number of questions. Is aesthetic testimony actually epistemically inferior? If so, in what ways, and what explains its inferiority? If not, why do our ordinary ways of thinking, talking, and engaging with aesthetic testimony treat it as being inferior? In this chapter, I consider various ways in which experimental philosophy can contribute to these debates. Drawing on extant work and some new empirical studies, this chapter provides an overview of what experimental philosophy has told us so far, and summarizes the implications for philosophical debate. (shrink)

Our trust in the word of others is often dismissed as unworthy, because the illusory ideal of "autonomous knowledge" has prevailed in the debate about the nature of knowledge. Yet we are profoundly dependent on others for a vast amount of what any of us claim to know. Coady explores the nature of testimony in order to show how it might be justified as a source of knowledge, and uses the insights that he has developed to challenge certain widespread (...) assumptions in the areas of history, law, mathematics, and psychology. (shrink)

In Testimony, Trust, and Authority, Benjamin McMyler argues that philosophers have failed to appreciate the nature and significance of our epistemic dependence ...

Virtually everything we know depends in some way or other on the testimony of others—what we eat, how things work, where we go, even who we are. We do not, after all, perceive firsthand the preparation of the ingredients in many of our meals, or the construction of the devices we use to get around the world, or the layout of our planet, or our own births and familial histories. These are all things we are told. Indeed, subtracting from (...) our lives the information that we possess via testimony leaves them barely recognizable. Scientific discoveries, battles won and lost, geographical developments, customs and traditions of distant lands—all of these facts would be completely lost to us. It is, therefore, no surprise that the importance of testimony, both epistemological and practical, is nearly universally accepted. Less consensus, however, is found when questions about the nature and extent of our dependence on the word of others arise. Is our justified reliance on testimony fundamentally basic, for instance, or is it ultimately reducible to perception, memory, and reason? Is trust, or some related interpersonal feature of our social interaction with one another, essential to the acquisition of beliefs that are testimonially justified? Is testimonial knowledge necessarily acquired through transmission from speaker to hearer? Can testimony generate epistemic features in its own right? These are the questions that will be taken up in this paper and, as will become clear, their answers have far-reaching consequences for how we understand our place in the social world. (shrink)

Two models of assertion are described and their epistemological implications considered. The assurance model draws a parallel between the ethical norms surrounding promising and the epistemic norms which facilitate the transmission of testimonial knowledge. This model is rejected in favour of the view that assertion transmits knowledge by expressing belief. I go on to compare the epistemology of testimony with the epistemology of memory.

A book review of Jon Robson, Aesthetic Testimony: An Optimistic Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, x+166 pp. ISBN 9780192862952.

In this paper I argue that Fricker’s influential account of testimonial injustice (hereafter ‘TI’) should be expanded to include cases of TI from mutually neutralising countervailing prejudices. In this kind of case, the hearer is given due credibility by the speaker. I describe a relevant case, defend it from objections, highlight how it differs from extant cases of due-credibility TI and describe its distinctive features. This case demonstrates how paying attention to the way multiple prejudices operate in concert leads to (...) expanding the repertoire of cases of TI and casts light on the harms of TI. (shrink)

This chapter reviews a number of related problems in the epistemology of testimony, and suggests some dilemmas for any theory of knowledge that tries to solve them. Here a common theme emerges: It can seem that any theory must make testimonial knowledge either too hard or too easy, and that therefore no adequate account of testimonial knowledge is possible. The chapter then puts forward a proposal for making progress. Specifically, an important function of the concept of knowledge is to (...) govern the acquisition and distribution of quality information within an epistemic community. Testimonial exchanges paradigmatically serve in the distribution role, but sometimes serve in the acquisition role. The resulting position, it is argued, explains why testimonial knowledge is sometimes easy to get, and sometimes much harder. (shrink)

Many epistemologists agree that even very young children sometimes acquire knowledge through testimony. In this paper I address two challenges facing this view. The first (building on a point made in Lackey (2005)) is the defeater challenge, which is to square the hypothesis that very young children acquire testimonial knowledge with the fact that children (whose cognitive immaturity prevents them from having or appreciating reasons) cannot be said to satisfy the No-Defeaters condition on knowledge. The second is the extension (...) challenge, which is to give a motivated, extensionally-adequate account of the conditions on testimonial knowledge in early childhood. Neither challenge can be met merely by endorsing externalism about knowledge; but we can meet both by reconceiving the process that eventuates in the child’s consumption of testimony. My central thesis is that this process should be seen as implicating features of the child's social environment. The result is a novel anti-individualistic externalism about knowledge. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed that reliance upon moral testimony is problematic in a way not common to reliance upon non-moral testimony. This chapter provides a new explanation of what the problem consists in—one that enjoys advantages over the most widely accepted explanation in the extant literature. The main theses of the chapter are as follows: that many forms of normative deference beyond the moral are problematic, that there is a common explanation of the problem with all of these (...) forms of deference—an explanation that is based on the connection between the relevant judgments and desire-like attitudes, and that this explanation is compatible with moral realism. (shrink)

Scientific Testimony concerns the roles of scientific testimony in science and society. The book develops a positive alternative to a tradition famously expressed by the slogan of the Royal Society Nullius in verba ("Take nobody's word for it"). This book argues that intra-scientific testimony—i.e., testimony between collaborating scientists—is not in conflict with the spirit of science or an add-on to scientific practice. On the contrary, intra-scientific testimony is a vital part of science. This is illustrated (...) by articulating epistemic norms of intra-scientific testimony and arguing that they are vital to scientific methodology on a par with other scientific norms governing scientific observation and data analysis. -/- The book also provides an account of public scientific testimony—i.e., scientific testimony to the lay population. This is done by integrating philosophical resources with empirical research on the science of science communication. For example, various misconceptions about science and folk epistemological biases are diagnosed as factors that contribute to science skepticism. This diagnosis provides the basis for developing novel norms for science communication that are sensitive to the psychological and social obstacles to laypersons' uptake of it. Finally, the volume discusses how public scientific testimony is best embedded in society and argues that it is critical for societies that pursue the ideals of deliberative democracy. Scientific Testimony draws on philosophy of science, social epistemology, and empirical research to provide a wide-ranging account of the roles of scientific testimony within scientific practice and within the wider society. (shrink)

Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project (...) in this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony. (shrink)

Aesthetic judgements formed on the basis of testimony are commonly held to be defective, illegitimate, or otherwise problematic. This first book-length treatment of the debate surrounding aesthetic testimony argues for the surprising conclusion that this widespread view is mistaken. Aesthetic testimony is in no way inferior as a source of judgement when compared to either first-hand aesthetic judgement, or testimony concerning non-aesthetic matters. Alongside establishing this position (an extreme form of ‘optimism concerning aesthetic testimony’) this (...) work also responds to the most prominent arguments for the opposing view (‘pessimism concerning aesthetic testimony’). Along the way, it also re-examines our understanding of the norms which govern both judgement and assertion in aesthetics. (shrink)

Speakers offer testimony. They also hedge. This essay offers an account of how hedging makes a difference to testimony. Two components of testimony are considered: how testimony warrants a hearer's attitude, and how testimony changes a speaker's responsibilities. Starting with a norm-based approach to testimony where hearer's beliefs are prima facie warranted because of social norms and speakers acquire responsibility from these same norms, I argue that hedging alters both components simultaneously. It changes which (...) attitudes a hearer is prima facie warranted in forming in response to testimony, and reduces how much responsibility a speaker undertakes in testifying. A consequence of this account is that speakers who hedge for strategic purposes deprive their hearers of warrant for stronger doxastic attitudes. (shrink)

This introduction to the edited volume on "Testimonial Injustice and Trust" provides (a) a brief overview of the philosophical debate on the notion of ‘testimonial injustice’ and (b) a summary of the 18 chapters constituting this volume. The contributions are divided into four thematic sections. These are (I) Rethinking Testimonial Injustice, (II) Testimonial Injustice and the Question of Trust, (III) The Public Spheres of Testimonial Injustice, and (IV) Testimonial Injustice and Public Health. The contributions criticize, complement, or expand on Fricker’s (...) central case of testimonial injustice and the proposed virtue of testimonial justice, thereby contributing to its better understanding and extending its scope. Moreover, through the application of theories of epistemic injustice, and testimonial injustice in particular, to new real-world cases and contexts, they seek to render our theories and concepts more robust and valuable. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with acquiring moral beliefs on the basis of testimony? Most philosophers think that there is something wrong with it, and most point to a special problem that moral testimony is supposed to create for moral agency. Being a good moral agent involves more than bringing about the right outcomes. It also involves acting with "moral understanding" and one cannot have moral understanding of what one is doing via moral testimony. And so, adherents (...) to this view claim, relying on moral testimony is problematic. Importantly, the problem that afflicts moral testimony, according to this view, is not a problem for testimonial knowledge in general. Indeed, critics of moral testimony acknowledge that a vast amount of our knowledge comes, completely unproblematically, from testimony. Call this the Asymmetry Thesis. We argue that while the diagnosis of what is wrong with moral testimony (when there is something wrong with it) in terms of moral understanding is correct, the lesson many of its adherents draw from it, namely that there is a principled difference between moral an non-moral testimony which renders the first, but not the second, problematic, is not. In other words, we argue that the Asymmetry Thesis is false. (shrink)

This paper advocates for a “social turn" in religious epistemology. Part One reviews some familiar skeptical arguments targeting religious belief (the argument from luck, the argument from peer disagreement, Hume's argument). All these skeptical arguments say that testimonial evidence cannot give religious belief adequate support or grounding, especially in the context of conflicting evidence. Part Two considers some recent work in social epistemology and the epistemology of testimony. Several issues regarding the nature of testimonial evidence are considered, and an (...) account of testimonial evidence as a means of distribution of information through the system is defended. Part Three uses the results of Part Two to reconsider the skeptical arguments in Part One. (shrink)

The epistemology of testimony has experienced a growth in interest over the last twenty-five years that has been matched by few, if any, other areas of philosophy. _Testimony: A Philosophical Introduction _provides an epistemology of testimony that surveys this rapidly growing research area while incorporating a discussion of relevant empirical work from social and developmental psychology, as well as from the interdisciplinary study of knowledge-creation in groups. The past decade has seen a number of scholarly monographs on the (...) epistemology of testimony, but there is a dearth of books that survey the current field. This book fills that gap, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of all major competing theories. All chapters conclude with Suggestions for Further Reading and Discussion Questions. (shrink)

In the epistemology of testimony it is often assumed that audiences are able to reliably recover asserted contents. In the philosophy of language this claim is contentious. This paper outlines one problem concerning the recovery of asserted contents, and argues that it prevents audiences from gaining testimonial knowledge in a range of cases. The recovery problem, in essence, is simply that due to the collective epistemic limitations of the speaker and audience speakers will, in certain cases, be insensitive to (...) the ways in which they may be misinterpreted. As a result audiences’ beliefs will often fail the safety and sensitivity conditions on knowledge. Once the problem has been outlined and distinguished from several related problems in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of testimony, a series of responses are considered. The first response holds that audiences possess defeaters in recovery problem cases, and thus wouldn’t form beliefs. The second response holds that the beliefs audiences form are very coarse grained, meaning they are not very vulnerable to failures of safety and sensitivity. The final response holds that the objects of speaker meaning are not propositional. All three responses are found to be unsatisfactory. (shrink)

This paper identifies two distinct dimensions of what might be called testimonial strength: first, in the case of testimony from more than one speaker, testimony can be said to be stronger to the extent that a greater proportion of the speakers give identical testimony; second, in both single-speaker and multi-speaker testimony, testimony can be said to the stronger to the extent that each speaker expresses greater conviction in the relevant proposition. These two notions of testimonial (...) strength have received scant attention in the philosophical literature so far, presumably because it has been thought that whatever lessons we learn from thinking about testimony as a binary phenomenon will apply mutatis mutandis to varying strengths of testimony. This paper shows that this will not work for either of the two aforementioned dimensions of testimonial strength, roughly because less testimony can provide more justification in a way that can only be explained by appealing to the (non-binary) strength of the testimony itself. The paper also argues that this result undermines some influential versions of non-reductionism about testimonial justification. (shrink)

That testimony is one of the principle bases on which many people hold their religious beliefs is hard to dispute. Equally hard to dispute is that our world contains an array of mutually incompatible religious traditions each of which has been transmitted down the centuries chiefly by way of testimony. In light of this latter it is quite natural to think that there is something defective about holding religious beliefs primarily or solely on the basis of testimony (...) from a particular tradition. The present chapter takes up the question of what that defect consists in. I first consider whether religious diversity entails that a religious believer’s testimony-based beliefs are not formed in a suitably epistemically reliable manner even conditional upon the truth of her religion. After casting doubt on this thought I turn to look at the idea that testimony-based beliefs are subject to defeaters in light of awareness of religious diversity, and I suggest that many such beliefs are not obviously so. According to my diagnosis the problem, rather, is that believers who base their religious beliefs just on testimony will be very unlikely to have reflective (that is, second-order) knowledge even if they possess first-order knowledge, and I explain why this is a notable shortcoming. (shrink)

A person sometimes forms moral beliefs by relying on another person''s moral testimony. In this paper I advance a cognitivist normative account of this phenomenon. I argue that for a person''s actions to be morally good, they must be based on a recognition of the moral reasons bearing on action. Morality requires people to act from an understanding of moral claims, and consequently to have an understanding of moral claims relevant to action. A person sometimes fails to meet this (...) requirement when she relies on another person''s moral testimony, and so there are moral limits on such reliance. (shrink)

Through a detailed analysis that draws on work across philosophy, the law, and social psychology, this book shows that, from the very beginning of the American criminal legal process in interrogation rooms to its final stages in front of parole boards, testimony is extracted from individuals through processes that are coercive, manipulative, or deceptive. This testimony is then unreasonably regarded as representing the testifiers’ truest or most reliable selves. With chapters ranging from false confessions and eyewitness misidentifications to (...) recantations from victims of sexual violence and expressions of remorse from innocent defendants at sentencing hearings, it is argued that there is a distinctive epistemic wrong being perpetrated against suspects, defendants, witnesses, and victims. This wrong involves brute State power targeting the epistemic agency of its citizens, extracting false testimony that is often life-shattering, and rendering the victims in question complicit in their own undoing. It is concluded that it is only through understanding what it means to respect the epistemic agency of each participant in the criminal legal system that we can truly grasp what justice demands and, in so doing, to reimagine what is possible. (shrink)

Testimonies of Platonic Tradition' is, in a way, a continuation of Konstantinos Staikos's recent publication 'Books and Ideas: The Library of Plato and the Academy' (2013). It deals with questions of transmission and classification of Plato's Dialogues from the philosopher's own age down to the 16th century, that is, with the fate of the Platonic corpus. As the chronicle of this journey unfolds, readers will be able to follow the foundation of philosophical schools whose teaching was based on Platonic theories (...) and concepts, in East and West. They will also obtain an overview of the works of commentary and annotation of Plato's works, composed by Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Latin and Arab authors in order to elucidate the philosopher's thought. The books makes clear the importance of 'Timaeus' from antiquity onwards, as this work became the bible of Platonism ever since Chalcidius paraphrased the dialogue into Latin and offered a classification of its subjects into categories. In addition, mention is made of the translation of 'Timaeus' and 'Parmenides' into Latin by the Greeks Henry Aristippus and George of Trebizond; the publication of the Latin translation of the philosopher's 'Complete Works' by Marsilio Ficino and the part played by the Platonic Academy of Florence in further transmitting the philosophy of Plato. The text also describes how Marcus Musurus prepared his 'editio princeps' of Plato's complete works and finally deals with the historical period when the debate over the primacy of Plato or Aristotle broke out. (shrink)

Is there anything peculiarly bad about accepting moral testimony? According to pessimists, trusting moral testimony is an inadequate substitute for working out your moral views on your own. Enlightenment requires thinking for oneself, at least where morality is concerned. Optimists, by contrast, aim to show that trusting moral testimony isn’t bad largely by arguing that it’s no worse than trusting testimony generally. Essentially, they play defense. However, this chapter goes on the offensive. It explores two reasons (...) for thinking that trusting another person’s moral testimony is especially good. The first is an extended application of some of the lessons from recent discussions about epistemic injustice. The second, borrowing some cryptic epistemological thoughts from the young Marx, is that trusting another’s moral testimony is necessary for perfecting ourselves. It concludes that it can be better to accept moral testimony than to arrive at the same moral view on your own. (shrink)

Epistemologists typically assume that the acquisition of knowledge from testimony is not threatened at the stage at which audiences interpret what proposition a speaker has asserted. Attention is instead typically paid to the epistemic status of a belief formed on the basis of testimony that it is assumed has the same content as the speaker’s assertion. Andrew Peet has pioneered an account of how linguistic context sensitivity can threaten the assumption. His account locates the threat in contexts in (...) which an audience’s evidence under-determines which proposition a speaker is asserting. I argue that Peet’s epistemic uncertainty account of the threat is mistaken and I propose an alternative. The alternative locates the threat in contexts that provide factors that give audiences a mistaken psychological certainty or confidence that a speaker has asserted a proposition she has not. (shrink)

Concepts like testimonial injustice (Fricker, 2007) and testimonial violence (Dotson, 2011) articulate that marginalized epistemic agents are unjustly undermined as testifiers when dominant agents cannot or will not hear, understand, or believe their testimony. This paper turns attention away from these constraints on uptake, and towards pragmatic, social, and political constraints on how dominant audiences receive and react to testimony. I argue that these constraints can also be sources of testimonial injustice and epistemic violence. Specifically, I explore a (...) kind of injustice that I call testimonial withdrawal, which occurs when a would-be speaker chooses to remain silent because they know or reasonably expect that there is pragmatic risk associated with speaking, given their unjust marginalization. I argue that this unjustly undermines epistemic agency, and that expanding Fricker and Dotson’s umbrella concepts to accommodate this idea results in a better understanding of the moral and epistemic contours of both testimonial withdrawal and these broader categories. (shrink)

According to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, (...) is not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why—in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language—it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication. (shrink)

Can we transmit understanding via testimony in more or less the same way in which we transmit knowledge? The standard view in social epistemology has a straightforward answer: no, we cannot. Three arguments supporting the standard view have been formulated so far. The first appeals to the claim that gaining understanding requires a greater cognitive effort than acquiring testimonial knowledge does. The second appeals to a certain type of epistemic trust that is supposedly characteristic of knowledge transmission (and maybe (...) of the transmission of epistemic goods in general) and that is allegedly incompatible with understanding. The third aims to show that there is a certain aspect of understanding (what epistemologists these days like to call “grasping”) that cannot be passed on to another person via testimony alone. In this article, I show that all of these arguments can be resisted. Thus, there seem to be no compelling reasons to embrace the standard view. (shrink)

I outline what I call the ‘deniability problem’, explain why it is problematic, and identify the range of utterances to which it applies (using religious discourse as an example). The problem is as follows: To assign content to many utterances audiences must rely on their contextual knowledge. This generates a lot of scope for error. Thus, speakers are able to make assertions and deny responsibility for the proposition asserted, claiming that the audience made a mistake. I outline the problem (a (...) limited version of which Fricker 2012 discusses), before explaining why it is problematic. Firstly it blocks testimonial knowledge according to assurance views. Secondly it prevents epistemic buck passing (the importance of which is emphasized by Goldberg 2006 and McMyler 2013). Finally, it removes a key disincentive to dishonesty. The recent literature on context sensitivity (particularly Cappelen and Lepore 2004) seems to entail that the problem applies to a very wide range of utterances. I consider a series of responses which fail to provide a solution, but which help us narrow down the scope of the problem. (shrink)

Can we gain understanding from testifiers who themselves fail to understand? At first glance, this looks counterintuitive. How could a hearer who has no understanding or very poor understanding of a certain subject matter non-accidentally extract items of information relevant to understanding from a speaker’s testimony if the speaker does not understand what she is talking about? This paper shows that, when there are theories or representational devices working as mediators, speakers can intentionally generate understanding in their hearers by (...) engaging in relevant speech acts without understanding the topic of these speech acts themselves. More specifically, I argue that testifiers can intentionally elicit understanding of empirical phenomena in their hearers even if they themselves lack such understanding – granted that they properly understood the epistemic mediators involved. (shrink)

Much of what we learn from talking and listening does not qualify as testimonial knowledge: we can learn a great deal from other people without simply accepting what they say as being true. In this article, I examine the ways in which we acquire skills or knowledge how from our interactions with other people, and I discuss whether there is a useful notion of testimonial knowledge how.Keywords: Knowledge how; Practical knowledge; Tacit knowledge; Testimony; Skills; Assertion.

: In this paper, I consider some issues concerning Hume’s epistemology of testimony. I’ll particularly focus on the accusation of reductivism and individualism brought by scholars against Hume’s view on testimonial evidence, based on the tenth section of his An enquiry concerning human understanding. I first explain the arguments against Hume’s position, and address some replies in the literature in order to offer an alternative interpretation concerning the way such a defense should go. My strategy is closely connected with (...) Hume’s notion of virtue and the role it plays in his epistemology, mainly as presented in his A treatise of human nature. I address the problem of how the section “Of miracles” in the Enquiry must be properly understood, as several misunderstandings of Hume’s epistemology of testimony emerge partially from the particular character and aim of that section. Resumen: En este artículo, considero algunas cuestiones relacionadas con la epistemología del testimonio de David Hume. El eje central será la acusación de reductivismo e individualismo de los estudiosos en contra de la opinión de Hume sobre la evidencia testimonial. Dicha acusación se basa en su tratamiento de los reportes sobre hechos milagrosos, presente en la sección X de su Investigación sobre el entendimiento humano. En primer lugar, se abordan los argumentos en contra de la posición de Hume y algunas respuestas en la literatura reciente, para luego ofrecer una interpretación alternativa con respecto a la forma en que debería articularse esa defensa. Mi estrategia está estrechamente relacionada con la noción de virtud de Hume y el papel que desempeña en su epistemología, principalmente como se presenta en su Tratado de la naturaleza humana. Finalmente, abordaré el problema relacionado con la forma en que debe entenderse correctamente la sección “Of miracles” de la Investigación, ya que varios malentendidos sobre la epistemología del testimonio de Hume emergen parcialmente del carácter particular y el objetivo de dicho ensayo. (shrink)

I argue, first, that testimony is likely a natural kind (where natural kinds are accurately described by the homoeostatic property cluster theory) and that if it is indeed a natural kind, it is likely necessarily reliable. I argue, second, that the view of testimony as a natural kind and as necessarily reliable grounds a novel, naturalist global reductionism about testimonial justification and that this new reductionism is immune to a powerful objection to orthodox Humean global reductionism, the objection (...) from the too-narrow induction base. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker has influentially discussed testimonial injustice: the injustice done to a speaker S by a hearer H when H gives S less-than-merited credibility. Here, I explore the prospects for a novel form of testimonial injustice, where H affords S due credibility, that is, the amount of credibility S deserves. I present two kinds of cases intended to illustrate this category, and argue that there is presumptive reason to think that testimonial injustice with due credibility exists. I show that if (...) it is denied that ultimately these cases exemplify testimonial injustice without credibility deficit, then either they must be taken to exemplify a novel kind of epistemic, non-testimonial injustice, or they bring to light a significant exegetical result. (shrink)

This article discusses the following question: what epistemic relation must audiences bear to the content of assertions in order to gain testimonial knowledge? There is a brief discussion of why this issue is of importance, followed by two counterexamples to the most intuitive answer: that in order for an audience to gain testimonial knowledge that p they must know that the speaker has asserted p. It is then suggested that the argument generalises and can be made to work on different (...) sets of assumptions about the conditions for knowledge, and the conditions under which a proposition is asserted. (shrink)

In light of recent social psychological literature, I expand Miranda Fricker’s important notion of testimonial injustice. A fair portion of Fricker’s account rests on an older paradigm of stereotype and prejudice. Given recent empirical work, I argue for what I dub prescriptive credibility deficits in which a backlash effect leads to the assignment of a diminished level of credibility to persons who act in counter-stereotypic manners, thereby flouting prescriptive stereotypes. The notion of a prescriptive credibility deficit is not merely an (...) interesting conceptual addendum that can be appended to Fricker’s theory without need for further emendation. I develop the wider implications of prescriptive credibility deficits and argue that they pose a challenge to Fricker’s conception of the function of credibility assignments in conversational exchange and how a virtuous listener should respond to the potential threat of a prejudicial stereotype affecting her credibility assignments. (shrink)

Testimony is an important source of our knowledge about the world. But to some, there seems something odd, perhaps even wrong, about trusting testimony about specifically moral matters. In this paper, I discuss several different explanations of what might be wrong with trusting moral testimony. These include the possibility that there is no moral knowledge; that moral knowledge cannot be transmitted by moral testimony; that there are reasons not to trust moral testimony either because you (...) should try to gain and use “moral understanding” to make your moral judgements instead or because doing so is damaging to your moral character in various ways. Finally, I discuss some “debunking explanations” according to which it is right and rational to trust moral testimony from a trustworthy source. © 2013 The Author. Philosophy Compass © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (shrink)

To verify the occurrence of a singular instance of testimonial injustice three facts must be established. The first is whether the hearer in fact has an identity prejudice of which she may or may not be aware; the second is whether that prejudice was in fact the cause of the unjustified credibility deficit; and the third is whether there was in fact a credibility deficit in the testimonial exchange. These three elements constitute the facts of the matter of testimonial injustice. (...) In this essay we argue that none of these facts can be established with any degree of confidence, and therefore that testimonial injustice is an undetectable phenomenon in singular instances. Our intention is not to undermine the idea of testimonial injustice, but rather to set limits to what can be justifiably asserted about it. According to our argument, although there are insufficient reasons to identify individual acts of testimonial injustice, it is possible to recognize recurrent patterns of epistemic responses to speakers who belong to specific social groups. General testimonial injustice can thus be characterized as a behavioral tendency of a prejudiced hearer. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey’s case “Creationist Teacher,” in which students acquire knowledge of evolutionary theory from a teacher who does not herself believe the theory, has been discussed widely as a counterexample to so-called transmission theories of testimonial knowledge and justification. The case purports to show that a speaker need not herself have knowledge or justification in order to enable listeners to acquire knowledge or justification from her assertion. The original case has been criticized on the ground that it does not really (...) refute the transmission theory, because there is still somebody in a chain of testifiers—the person from whom the creationist teacher acquired what she testifies—who knows the truth of the testified statements. In this paper, we provide a kind of pattern for generating counterexample cases, one that avoids objections discussed by Peter Graham and others in relation to such cases. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey ('Testimonial Knowledge and Transmission' The Philosophical Quarterly 1999) and Peter Graham ('Conveying Information, Synthese 2000, 'Transferring Knowledge' Nous 2000) offered counterexamples to show that a hearer can acquire knowledge that P from a speaker who asserts that P, but the speaker does not know that P. These examples suggest testimony can generate knowledge. The showpiece of Lackey's examples is the Schoolteacher case. This paper shows that Lackey's case does not undermine the orthodox view that testimony cannot (...) generate knowledge. This paper explains why Lackey's arguments to the contrary are ineffective for they misunderstand the intuitive rationale for the view that testimony cannot generate knowledge. This paper then elaborates on a version of the case from Graham's paper 'Conveying Information' (the Fossil case) that effectively shows that testimony can generate knowledge. This paper then provides a deeper informative explanation for how it is that testimony transfers knowledge, and why there should be cases where testimony generates knowledge. (shrink)

[The version of this paper published by Oxford online in 2019 was not copy-edited and has some sense-obscuring typos. I have posted a corrected (but not the final published) version on this site. The version published in print in 2020 has these corrections.] Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what you get when you add an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion (...) -- assertion without testimony -- as what you get when you subtract that interpersonal relation? In this chapter, I’ll argue for the subtractive approach and for the more general thesis that its treatment of the interpersonal element in assertion makes understanding that interpersonal element the key to understanding how assertion expresses belief. My theory of belief-expression in assertion treats it as internalizing the transmission of belief in testimony. How we understand that internalizing move depends on how we conceptualize the interpersonal element in testimony. Since what I’ll call the Command Model does not give us the conceptual resources to make this move, we should adopt an alternative that I’ll call the Custodial Model, on which a testifier aims not to convince her addressee but to reason with him – to give him reasons to believe what she tells him grounded in her trustworthiness in thus attempting to influence him. The subtractive approach to assertion thus rests on a key distinction between the aims of reasoning and persuasion. (shrink)

Though much of what we learn about the world comes from trusting testimony, the status of aesthetic testimony – testimony about aesthetic value – is equivocal. We do listen to art critics but our trust in them is typically only provisional, until we are in a position to make up our own mind. I argue that provisional trust (but not full trust) in testimony typically allows us to develop and use aesthetic understanding (understanding why a work (...) of art is valuable, or similar); and aesthetic understanding is an essential component of aesthetic virtue. Aesthetic virtue is the orientation of a whole person towards aesthetic value and aesthetic reasons, through action, non‐cognitive and cognitive attitudes. The ideal (aesthetically virtuous) way to make aesthetic judgements is through your own aesthetic understanding. (shrink)

This article addresses important epistemological issues raised by Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo’s pioneering philosophical fieldwork among Yoruba herbalists or masters of medicine (onisegun). More precisely, I shall primarily investigate, as well as object to, the unduly restrictive view they take on testimony in Yoruba epistemic practice. With this criticism as the starting point, but still based on the cases Hallen and Sodipo provide, I explore different ways in which an “oral culture” like Yoruba (as traditionally depicted) can (...) rely on testimony as a source of justification without succumbing to the gullible and uncritical attitude towards tradition such societies have been charged with. To this purpose, I put to use relevant developments in analytic epistemology taking place after Hallen and Sodipo published their work. (shrink)

The status of moral testimony has recently been challenged, for both epistemic and non‐epistemic reasons. This paper distinguishes two methods of teaching: transmission, “classic” learning from testimony, that results in second hand knowledge, and propagation which results in first hand knowledge and understanding. Moral propagation avoids most of the epistemic and non‐epistemic problems of transmission. Moreover, moral propagation can develop and refine non‐cognitive attitudes too. Therefore moral testimony should (and normally does) take the form of moral propagation, (...) not transmission. (shrink)