Introduction, Jennifer Lackey
Lackey, J. (2006),Introduction, in Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa, ed.,’The Epistemology of Testimony’, Oxford University Press, , pp. 1-21.
p. 2 – ‘For at issue is a disagreement over the proper understanding of the relationship between epistemic agents and the broader social world: are the normative requirements for testimonial justification and knowledge a burden that falls primarily on individual knowers, or are they largely satisfied by features of the social interaction that takes place between speakers and hearers.’
p. 3 – Definition of Testimony – ‘T: S testifies that p by making an act of communication a if and only if (in part) in virtue of a’s communicable content, (1) S reasonably intends to convey the information that p, or (2) a is reasonably taken as conveying the information that p.’
(Lackey modifies (2) to (2*) to account for situations where we mistake a statement as not being testimony (admission of guilt via a soliloquy is her example): a is or should be reasonably taken as conveying the information that p.)
(in part, in the definition, refers to situations which shouldn’t be construed as testimonial (to Lackey); I sing ‘Lalalala’ but this isn’t, strictly, testimony that I have a good singing voice (which I do) and if I say ‘It is raining’ to people who are standing with me outside in the rain then the circumstances don’t seem to warrant treating my statement as testimony.)
‘What is of import for justification or knowledge that is distinctively testimonial is that a hearer form a given belief on the basis of the content of a speaker’s testimony.’
(p. 5 – I think, based upon the first paragraph proper, that Reliabilism is going to be a kind of reductionism in re testimony because reliabilism will give us the justification for holding a testimonial belief for being knowledge by reference to the belief acquisition being an example of a reliable process.)
p. 5 – Global Reductionism: ‘…a hearer must have non-testimonial based positive reasons for believing that testimony is generally reliable.’
Local Reductionism: ‘…in order to justifiedly accept a speaker’s testimony, a hearer must have non-testimonial based positive reasons for accepting the particular report in question.’
(Should I be concerned that she moves from belief to acceptance from talk of testimony to talk of reports here?)
p. 6 – Transmission of Epistemic Properties thesis:
‘TEP-N: For every speaker, A, and hearer, B, B’s belief that p is warranted (justified, known) on the basis of A’s testimony that p only if A’s belief that p is warranted (justified, known).
‘TEP-S: For every speaker, A, and hearer, B, if (1) A’s belief that p is warranted (justified, known), (2) B comes to believe that p on the basis of the content a A’s testimony that p, and (3) B has no undefeated defeaters for believing that p, then B’s belief that p is warranted (justified, known).’
(‘Justified, known’ set is a bit weird…)
p. 7 – Two known objections: Unreliable believers might be reliable testifiers and reliable believers might be bad testifiers.
