Testimonial Justification and Transindividual Reasons, Schmitt
Schmitt, F. F. (2006),Testimonial Justification and Transindividual Reasons, in Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa, ed.,’The Epistemology of Testimony’, Oxford University Press, , pp. 193-224.
p. 193 – ‘…testimonial knowledge is social in the sense that my having testimonial knowledge entails that there is knowledge belonging (in the normal sense) to an individual other than myself.’
…
‘By contrast, testimonially justified belief is clearly not social in a way closely analogous to this social condition on testimonial knowledge. It is not true that
My belief p is justified on the basis of T’s testimony only if T has a good reason to believe p.’
p. 194 – ‘So my belief p’s being justified on the basis of T’s testimony does not entail that T has a good reason to believe p. Testimonially justified belief is not social in this strong sense.’
p. 195 – Makes an analogy to memory in support of the idea that a belief p can be justified on testimony even if you do not (currently) possess a good reason to believe p.
p. 196 – We can lack current reasons for knowing something via memory but know that we once had reasons for coming to that belief.
p. 204 – Claims that testimonial beliefs can be justified without reference to coherentist or foundationalist justification.
p. 204-5 – Assertion model critique.
p. 207 – Questions whether we can plausibly claim that if a source is rational then it has a veritistic function. Even if a source is rational and does have a veritistic function it might well perform its function poorly.
p. 209 – Transindividual Thesis (which is related to the thesis of memorial justification, the Transtemporal Thesis):
‘…in some instances of testimonially justified belief, I am justified on the basis of the testifier’s good reason to believe p. I am so justified whenever I am not justified on the basis of my own good reason to believe p.’
p. 212 – Social incentives to present truths may compensate for nonveritistic motivations.
p. 213 – Could recover memorial justification; might never get the testifier’s justification…
Reply: Simply reason with the belief p knowing that your reasons for holding it come from someone else [Similarly; if I can’t remember exactly why I believe p I might not hold to it as strongly as I would if I could remember why I hold it].
p. 215 – On the Transtemporal Thesis my being justified to believe p in the first instance carries to subsequent instances even if I forget why I was justified.
p. 216-7 – Sometimes we inherit bad beliefs from a community of knowers (miasma theory of diseases, for instance) which we can’t blame solely on one person.
p. 217 – Asks why, if the case for the Transindividual Thesis is nearly as strong for that of the Transtemporal Thesis that we find the Transindividual Thesis so suspect.
