Testimonial justification: the parity argument, Schmitt
Scmitt, F. F. (2002), ‘Testimonial justification: the parity argument’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33, 385-406.
p. 386 – Succinct summary of Inductive Individualism (a form of local justification of testimony).
p. 388-9 – Beliefs are prior to reason (first order); acceptance is the positive evaluation of belief (second order).
p. 389 – Parity Argument:
‘(Worth) I am worthy of my trust in what I accept
(Parity) But others are as worthy of my trust in what they accept as I am in what I accept.
(Testimony) So others are worthy of my trust in what they accept.’
p. 390 – Parity comes before any claim that a given piece of testimony is reasonable.
‘But surely I am worthy of my trust only in my best acceptences, not in all of my acceptances.’
* This relates to Inference to the Best Explanation material.
p. 391 – Tries to restrict (W) to best acceptances, but this makes (P) seem implausible. Takes (W) to be either restricted or unrestricted in what follows.
p. 393 – ‘In short, I can have no ordinary basis, whether testimonial, empirical or a priori, for the premises of the parity argument if it is to confer reasonableness on my testimonial acceptances. Note that the difficulty here extended not only to the parity argument but to all other arguments routed through the proposition that I am trustworthy in my testimonial beliefs. Once the critique of inductive individualism is accepted, no such argument can confer reasonableness on my testimonial beliefs in the ordinary way.’
p. 395 – Developing a line from Foley: My faculties are defensible (reasonable to rust/are reliable), given conditions and if I can trust my faculties it is reasonable to trust the products of them.
p. 397 – ‘Defensibility has to do with what relevant evaluators of an item would or should say or think in evaluating the item, but worth does not turn on what these evaluators would or should say or think.’
p. 399 – We aren’t very good at judging judgements (so to speak).
p. 400 – When we speak about trusting our judgements we mean ‘trust’ in sense of ‘use’ rather than trust in sense of trustworthiness. I must, of course, trust perception, but that does not mean that it is trustworthy.
p. 401-2 – Critique of the notion of an unrestricted (P).
Overall; prospects not good for the Parity Argument.
