Does anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony imply interest relativism about knowledge attributions?

Anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony is the thesis that testimonial knowledge is not reducible to knowledge of some other familiar kind, such as inductive knowledge. Interest relativism about knowledge attributions is the thesis that the standards for knowledge attributions are relative to practical contexts. This paper argues that anti-reductionism implies interest relativism. The notion of “implies” here is a fairly strong one: anti-reductionism, together with plausible assumptions, entails interest relativism. A second thesis of the paper is that anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony creates significant pressure toward attributor contextualism (a version of interest relativism). Even if anti-reductionism does not strictly entail attributor contextualism, the most powerful motivations for anti-reductionism also motivate attributor contextualism over alternative positions.

Interpersonal Epistemic Entitlements

This chapter argues that the nature of our epistemic entitlement to rely on certain belief-forming processes—perception, memory, reasoning, and perhaps others—is not restricted to one’s own belief-forming processes. It argues as well that we can have access to the outputs of others’ processes, in the form of their assertions. These two points support the conclusion that epistemic entitlements are “interpersonal.” It then proceeds to argue that this opens the way for a non-standard version of anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, and a more “extended” epistemology—one that calls into question the epistemic significance that has traditionally been ascribed to the boundaries separating individual subjects.

The Interested Expert Problem and the Epistemology of Juries

The existence of experts raises a host of interesting questions in social, legal, and political epistemology. This article introduces and discusses interested experts – people who are experts on some topic, but who also have a distinct set of values and preferences regarding that topic, so that they are not well-described as “disinterested” parties. Interested experts raise several distinct problems in social, legal, and political epistemology. Some general questions arise: can we rationally or justifiably form beliefs relying on interested expert testimony? Do they constitute knowledge? Under what circumstances? This article focuses on a specific question in legal epistemology: should interested experts be allowed to serve on juries and, if so, should it be permissible for lawyers to strike them from the pool of potential jurors? My hope is that concentrating on this question will provide insight into the more general questions concerning the epistemology of testimony with respect to interested experts, while also providing concrete recommendations for jury reform to improve the epistemic performance of juries.

Fake News and Epistemic Rot; or, Why We Are All in This Together

Fake news poses an interesting test case to theories of the epistemology of testimony. If they are to illuminate the nature of the epistemic challenges and harms fake news poses to (members of) a community, the theories themselves must move beyond several overly simplistic models of communication. After developing and criticizing some of these, this chapter goes on to offer a more nearly adequate model. The distinctive feature of the theory presented is that it goes beyond the reporter (speaker) and recipient (hearer), postulating several other roles people (and technology) play in communication. The upshot of these reflections is a case for thinking of epistemic responsibility in distinctly social terms—in terms of what we owe to each other as creatures who are both information-seeking and highly social.

Testimony

This chapter provides a discussion of the epistemology of testimony as it plays out in classical Buddhist accounts of knowledge. The chapter begins by describing the contrast between the (non-Buddhist) Nyāya School’s account of testimony and Dharmakīrti’s (Buddhist) account of testimony. The chapter then proceeds to illuminate various other differences between the Nyāya and Buddhist accounts, focusing principally on the distinction between reductive and nonreductive theories of testimonial knowledge and on the distinction between speaker conditions and hearer conditions for testimonial knowledge. The chapter concludes with a section on the transmission theory of testimony and investigates whether the transmission theory would be supported by classical Buddhist epistemologists.

The Epistemology of Prejudice Acquisition

The standard analysis of the epistemology of prejudice often assumes that we might simply define prejudice as a type of belief acquired or maintained without regard to one’s evidence, and therefore as involving some kind of breakdown of epistemic rationality. We now move to assess this assumption on its merits. Chapter 4 considers the problem in light of the acquisition of prejudiced belief. It argues that canons of inductive inference as well as considerations from the epistemology of testimony strongly support the view that individuals can come to acquire prejudiced belief without compromising their epistemic rationality. In fact, given the information environments they find themselves in, these might well be the beliefs that they should form, epistemically speaking, in the simple sense these are the beliefs that are best supported by their evidence. There is no conceptual barrier to understanding how people could be epistemically justified in acquiring prejudiced beliefs.

A Credibility-Backed Norm for Testimony

I propose that testimony is subject to a norm that is backed by a credibility sanction: whenever the norm is violated, it is appropriate for the testifier to lose some credibility for their future testimony. This is one of a family of sanction-based norms, where violation of the norm makes it appropriate to lose some power; in this case, the power to induce belief through testimony. The applicability of the credibility norm to testimony follows from the epistemology of testimony, in that false or unjustified testimony weakens the reason for belief that is provided by the speaker's future testimony.

Conversational Pressure

This book aims to explore the scope, sources, and nature of the normative expectations that are generated by participants in speech exchanges. Such expectations, I argue, are warranted by the performance of speech acts: the performance of these acts entitles an audience to expect certain things of the speaker, even as these performances also entitle the speaker to expect certain things of her audience. The account I propose postulates two fundamental types of normativity involved in these expectations: epistemic normativity, wherein subjects are expected to live up to certain epistemological standards, whether in the production of or in the reaction to speech acts; and interpersonal normativity, wherein subjects are expected to live up to certain standards of interpersonal conduct (including but not limited to the standards of ethics). In the course of defending the account, the book explores such topics as the normative significance of acts of address, the epistemic costs of politeness, the bearing of epistemic injustice on the epistemology of testimony, the normative pressure friendship exerts on belief, the nature of epistemic trust, the significance of conversational silence, and the evils of silencing.