Indefensible middle ground for local reductionism about testimony

Ratio

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 170-190

  Gelfert, Axel ^a  

^a NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE   (Singapore)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65849338687     PISSN: 00340006     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2009.00424.x     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. To mention just two recent examples, Faulkner (1998: 311) writes that 'antireductionism is by far the most common epistemological position', whereas Shogenji (2006: 332) argues that 'the more traditional position is reductionism'. See Paul Faulkner. 'David Hume's Reductionist Epistemology of Testimony', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 79 (1998), pp. 302-313;
2. Tomoji Shogenji, 'A Defense of Reductionism about Testimonial Justification of Beliefs', Noûs, 40 (2006), pp. 331-346.
3. See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding [1748], Ed. by Tom L. Beauchamp. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
4. See Elizabeth Flicker, 'Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony', Mind, 104 (1995), p. 394.
5. Also relevant are Elizabeth Flicker, 'The Epistemology of Testimony', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Suppl.), 61 (1987), pp. 57-83;
6. Elizabeth Flicker, 'Against Gullibility', in B. K. Matilal & A. Chakrabarti (Eds.), Knowing From Words (pp. 125-162). (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994);
7. Elizabeth Flicker, 'Testimony: Knowing Through Being Told', in I. Niiniluoto, M. Sintonen & J. Wolehski (Eds.), Handbook of Epistemology (pp. 109-130). (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004).
8. See C. A. J. Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), especially Chapter 4. a This formulation follows Christopher Insole's summary of Fricker's position as outlined in (Fricker, 1987; 1994; 1995; cf. footnote 3);
9. see Christopher J. Insole, 'Seeing Off the Local Threat to Irreducible Knowledge by Testimony', The Philosophkai Quarterly, 50 (2000), pp. 45-48.
10. On this point, see Martin Kusch, Knowledge by Agreement. The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 25-26.
11. Sanford Goldberg notes a similar affinity, when he argues that reliabilist considerations tend to support the kind of 'presumption-to-trust' thesis, which Flicker (1994: 128) had earlier identified as incompatible with local red unionism. See Sanford C. Goldberg. Anti-Individualism: Mind, and Language, Knowledge and Justification. (Cambodge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 160.
12. I am borrowing the phrase 'tacit confirmation' in relation to testimony from Jonathan E. Adler, who develops the idea in his Beliefs Own Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2002).
13. This line of argument has recently been systematically developed by Miranda Fricker, in her Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007).
14. See Miranda Fricker. 'Epistemic Injustice and a Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing', in M. Brady & D. Pritchard (Eds.), Moral & Epistemic Values (pp. 139-158). (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 154.
15. See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 170.
16. See Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind [1764], Ed. by D. R. Brooks. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 1997), VI: xxiv.
17. For example Insole (2000; cf. footnote 5), and Matthew Weiner, 'Accepting Testimony'. The Philosophical Quarterly, 53 (2003). pp. 256-264.
18. Pritchard (2004), while recognising that local reductionism accords some testimonial beliefs (specifically, those acquired during the developmental phase) a default epistemic status, and in this sense may be regarded as a form of 'credulism', does not elaborate on the consequences I have sketched. See Duncan Pritchard, 'The Epistemology of Testimony', Philosophical Issues, 14 (2004), pp. 326-348.