It Takes Two to Tango: Beyond Reductionism and Non-Reductionism, Jennifer Lackey
Lackey, J. (2006),It Takes Two to Tango: Beyond Reductionism and Non-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony, in Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa, ed.,’The Epistemology of Testimony’, Oxford University Press, , pp. 160-189.
p. 161 – Circularity problem for Global Reductionism (especially in regard to children).
Correspondence problem; not only are we reliant on testimony for testimony but we have little independent empirical evidence that corresponds to testimony.
p. 162 – ‘Because of this epistemic heterogeneity, it is doubtful, not only whether “testimony” picks out an epistemically interesting or unified kind but also whether it even makes sense to talk about testimony being a generally reliable source.’
Even if testimony is generally reliable does this tell us anything about the reliability of individual reports?
p. 164 – Claims that Reductionism fails because an agent’s reasons for holding a belief can be justified even when the belief itself is not justified.
p. 166 – ‘It is, therefore, not enough for testimonial justification that a hearer have even epistemically excellent positive reasons for accepting a speaker’s testimony—the speaker must also do her part in the testimonial exchange by offering testimony that is reliable or otherwise truth-conducive.’
p. 167-9 – Runs, as an example of the non-reductionist line, a example where someone knowingly finds an alien diary that happens to look like it is written in English. Because thge agent has no prior experience of aliens the agent has no reason to think that the English-like prose should be read as English or that it is a diary or that aliens do not, as standard practice, write deceptive texts, et al. Lackey argues it is irrational for the agent to read the text as a diary even though a non-reductionist probably should say it can be (prima facie warrant). She follows this up with an example of someone who loses their memory and forgets about human psychology, saying that this case is epistemically relevant to the alien case (should this agent find the diary) yet it is clear that in this case (and the former) that we can talk about agents belonging to, for want of a better term, an institution. The former agent who finds the diary isn’t a member of the alien institution and should suspend judgement on the diary. The latter agent is no longer (whilst she has no grasp of human psychology) a member of our institution so has even less reason to take the diary as a diary.
p. 170 – Lackey’s ‘Mixed’ view: ‘To put it somewhat crudely, the speaker condition ensures reliability while the hearer condition ensures rationality for testimonial justification.’
‘Dualism: For every speaker A and hearer B, B justifiedly believes that p on the basis of A’s testimony that p only if: (1) B believes that p on the basis of the content of A’s testimony that p, (2) A’s testimony that p is reliable or otherwise truth conducive, and (3) B has appropriate positive reasons for accepting A’s testimony that p.’
p. 171 – Dualism specifies necessary conditions only; there may be more conditions for a complete account of testimonial justification.
p. 172 – Contends that (3) is the contentious clause.
p. 173 – Because there are necessary but not sufficient reasons for finding a stranger’s testimony good the account (in re (3)) should not suffer the usual inductive/testimony objection.
p. 174 – ‘The point is borne out by noticing just how difficult it is to construct a case in which a speaker truly fails to have any relevant positive reasons for accepting a given report.’
p. 175 – ‘According to dualism, the reasons invoked for accepting a speaker’s testimony can, and often are, themselves acquired from the testimony of others. Indeed, there can be epistemic chains involving many more speaker than two. For instance, A’s reason for accepting B’s testimony may be the testimony of C which, in turn, may be based on the testimony of D, and so on. What is crucial for satisfaction of (2) is that the final link in the epistemic chain in question is non-testimonially justified.’
p. 176 – Important difference between testimonial beliefs and other beliefs is that testimonial beliefs are acquired from persons and such persons can have intentions…
Testimonial beliefs can be insincere; no parallel in perception, et al.
