Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony, Elizabeth Fricker
Fricker, E. (1995), ‘Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony’, Mind 104, 393-411.
(Review of Coady’s ‘Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992))
p. 394 – Pithy summary of the Reductionist position and Coady’s critique of it.
‘Reductionists about testimony hold that, if testimony is to be vindicated as a source not merely of belief, but of knowledge, our epistemic right to believe what others tell us must be exhibitable as grounded in other epistemic resources and principles—perception, memory and inference—which are regarded by them as both more fundamental, and less problematic. Within the reductionist camp we need to distinguish optimists and pessimists: common to them is the thesis, call it R-Nec, that such a reduction is needed in order to vindicate testimony. But optimists maintain, while pessimists deny, the thesis R-Poss, that such a reduction is possible. The optimistic combination is what Coady calls the “Reductive Position”. Pessimistic reductionists (Coady’s “Puritans”) conclude that testimony is not a source of justified belief, or knowledge, at all. In doing so they deny what we may call the Commonsense Constraint (CC): that testimony is, at least on occasion, a source of knowledge—CC, R-Nec and Not-(R-Poss) being an inconsistent triad.
‘The two-part overall aim of Coady’s book is first, to convince the reader of the untenability of the Reductive Posiiton, by showing R-Poss to be flase; and second, to defend a non-reductive conception of testimonial knowledge on which R-Nec is false.’
p. 397 – Critique of Coady’s definition of testimony: he builds in that testimony ‘that p’ is evidence ‘that p’ without adequately showing that the testifier is authoritative on p.
p. 398 – Distinction between inferentialist/perceptualist [which is she claiming? Here she refers to inferentialism but still seems to be running the McDowell perceptualist account] picture (Fricker) and direct picture (Coady) in re whether testimony is knowledge in itself (direct) or must be justified (inferentialist).
p. 399 – Characterises the direct/prima facie view as one resting on a Presumptive Right to believe what one is told (subject to the usual defeaters).
p. 400 – Argues that Coady accepts the commonsense constraint but also supports the presumptive right; she claims that Coady, at best, makes the presumptive right permissible but not compelling.
Argues that Coady’s view that we should trust in others is misplaced because surely we should assess an agent’s trustworthiness. But surely this is Coady’s point; we distrust because we have a culture of lying (although Fricker’s point might well be that it isn’t lying, per se, but rather fallibility that causes mistrust, although she would have to tell a special story as to how transmission exacerbates this (which Coady would dispute) as surely this affects perception, et al) and that this is something which isn’t necessary for an account of how knowledge can be transmitted (via language).
p. 401 – ‘I shall suggest that, while trusted past testimony has an ineliminable place in supporting a mature individual’s belief system, this does not imply that uncritical trust is the attitude she must or should take to new informants.’
p. 403 – Presumptive Right seems true of the developmental stage (i.e. children) but not of the mature stage (adults).
p. 404 – Runs local reduction line for the mature stage.
p. 405 – Points out that Coady talks about not assessing speakers for their trustworthiness but that he then includes, implicitly, such criteria in his examples.
p. 408 – Scathing critique of Coady’s chapter on Pyschology.
p. 409-10 – Critique of the Davidsonian line; yes, most assertions over time must be true (i.e. Cooper’s critique of Fricker) but this does not mean testimony is generally reliable.
p. 410 – Critique of Coady’s coherence argument: it works in the developmental stage but in the mature stage we might find that a coherent set of beliefs is still wrong. [However, if you are focussed on justified belief, then surely this is not so problematic as it would be if your were running a JTB line (which neither Fricker nor Coady are)...]
