Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin Goldman on Epistemology and Education

In his recent work in social epistemology, Alvin Goldman argues that truth is the fundamental epistemic end of education, and that critical thinking is of merely instrumental value with respect to that fundamental end. He also argues that there is a central place for testimony and trust in the classroom, and an educational danger in over-emphasizing the fostering of students' critical thinking. In this paper I take issue with these claims, and argue that (1) critical thinking is a fundamental end of education, independently of its instrumental tie to truth, and (2) it is critical thinking, rather than testimony and trust, that is educationally basic.     

Under Siege: A Mother–Daughter Relationship Survives the Holocaust

In this article, I look at a mother–daughter relationship under the traumatic circumstances of the Holocaust. I present two vignettes from the video testimony of a mother and daughter who survived the camps together and reflect on certain dynamic aspects of their dyadic relationship in the context of starvation and of witnessing infanticide. I reconstruct the perspective of the adolescent daughter and explore connections between developmental issues of female adolescence and her real-life experience as a camp inmate. Psychoanalytic interpretation is balanced with historical background information to show the importance of the dyadic space of the mother–daughter relationship for the (emotional) survival of both women and to acknowledge the limitedness of the protection the dyadic shell of their relationship could provide in the face of external trauma. During the testimony, these limits are revealed in moments of disintegration of an otherwise highly elaborate and contained mother–daughter narrative and through empathic absences of both survivors from each other.     

Representation and the Intrapsychic: Cartesian Barriers to Empathic Contact

This paper argues for a radical relational perspective that explicitly challenges the notion of the intrapsychic and the related Cartesian assumptions of representationalism. Conceptual tools derived from the school of embodied cognition provide an alternative theoretical language that depicts a new understanding of experience as an emergent and distributed phenomenon of a dialogic communicative system. Clinical vignettes illustrate how this new ontology of experience promotes a therapeutic ambience that dissolves the barriers to empathic contact imposed by the retention of representational modes of thought.     

Standard of Care (Book)

A recent Supreme Court decision, Kumho Tire Co., Ltd. v. Carmichael (March 23, 1999), may have substantial impact on psychological expert testimony. Previous criteria for admissibility of scientific expert testimony now apply broadly to expert testimony, not just testimony narrowly grounded in scientific evidence. Judges will determine the relevance and reliability of all expert testimony, including that based on clinical experience or training. Admissible testimony will either satisfy the criteria established in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) or meet similarly rigorous standards judged appropriate to the particular field involved. Because psychological testimony has varied in its evidentiary basis, sometimes relying on science and otherwise on clinical training or experience, court decisions will gradually determine the precedent for its admissibility. We also discuss long-term consequences for the credibility of psychological expert testimony and the relation between psychology and law.     

Monitoring and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony

One of the central points of contention in the epistemology of testimony concerns the uniqueness (or not) of the justification of beliefs formed through testimony–whether such justification can be accounted for in terms of, or 'reduced to', other familiar sort of justification, e.g. without relying on any epistemic principles unique to testimony. One influential argument for the reductionist position, found in the work of Elizabeth Fricker, argues by appeal to the need for the hearer to monitor the testimony for credibility. Fricker (1994) argues, first, that some monitoring for trustworthiness is required if the hearer is to avoid being gullible, and second, that reductionism but not anti-reductionism is compatible with ascribing an important role to the process of monitoring in the course of justifiably accepting observed testimony. In this paper we argue that such an argument fails.     

The moral obligations of trust

Moral obligation, Darwall argues, is irreducibly second personal. So too, McMyler argues, is the reason for belief supplied by testimony and which supports trust. In this paper, I follow Darwall in arguing that the testimony is not second personal ‘all the way down’. However, I go on to argue, this shows that trust is not fully second personal, which in turn shows that moral obligation is equally not second personal ‘all the way down’.     

Why the Capacity to Pretend Matters for Empathy

A phenomenological insight in the debate on empathy is that it is possible to directly perceive other people’s emotions in their expressive bodily behaviour. Contrary to what is suggested by many phenomenologists, namely that this perceptual skill is immediately available if one has vision, this paper argues that the perceptual skill for empathy is acquired. Such a skill requires that we have undergone certain emotional experiences ourselves and that we have had the experience of seeing the world differently, which is a form of pretence. By investigating how we retain knowledge of what is real while pretending, that is, how we anchor the experience of pretence in something that is not pretended, the paper argues that we split our experiential perspective into a double perspective, which differs from the cognitive act of understanding what a perspective is. With this notion in hand, we can return to the debate on empathy. It is argued that in order to have the capacity for direct empathic perception, one must have undergone experiences involving a double perspective.     

Empathy,Embodiment, and the Unity of Expression

This paper presents an account of empathy as the form of experience directed at embodied unities of expressive movement. After outlining the key differences between simulation theory and the phenomenological approach to empathy, the paper argues that while the phenomenological approach is closer to respecting a necessary constitutional asymmetry between first-personal and second-personal senses of embodiment, it still presupposes a general concept of embodiment that ends up being problematic. A different account is proposed that is neutral on the explanatory role of the first-person sense of embodiment, which leads to an emphasis on the transformative nature of empathy and a broadening of the scope of possible targets of empathic awareness.     

Sprirtual aspects of psychotherapy

This article addresses the relevance of spirituality to psychology and psychotherapy. It argues that spiritual experience is phenomenologically legitimate and worthy of study, especially by students of mental health. It utilizes Fox's (1985) definition of spirituality as unitive experience to show that spiritual experience is often present, overtly or covertly, within the ritual of psychotherapy. The paper argues that the therapist's adoption of an empathic posture is essentially a spiritual position. This position consists of a sense of peace, eternity, forgiveness, faith, love, truth, and God. These aspects are part of an integrated spiritual gestalt which is, though generally unacknowledged, fundamental to the communal healing process of psychotherapy. The paper concludes by asserting that greater involvement with the unitive (as opposed to the disunitive) represents a positive paradigmatic shift for psychology and humanity.     

Character and Knowledge: Learning from the Speech of Experts

This paper discusses the ways in which a person’s character (ethos) and a hearer’s emotional response (pathos) are part of the complex judgments made about experts’ claims, along with an actual assessment of those claims (logos). The analysis is rooted in the work of Aristotle, but expands to consider work on emotion and cognition conducted by Thagard and Gigerenzer. It also draws on some conclusions of the general epistemology of testimony (of which expert testimony is a special subset), where it is argued that we learn not just from the transmission of another’s beliefs, but from the words they speak. This shifts the onus in testimony away from the intentions of a speaker onto the judgments of an audience, capturing better its social character and reflecting our experience of receiving testimony. I conclude, however, that accepting the arguments of experts involves much more than simply believing what they say.     

Gender differences in empathic accuracy: Differential ability or differential motivation?

Following their qualitative review of the findings from 10 relevant studies, Graham and Ickes (1997) speculated that reliable gender‐of‐perceiver differences in empathic accuracy (a) were limited to studies in which the empathic inference form made empathic accuracy salient as the dimension of interest, and (b) therefore reflected the differential motivation, rather than the differential ability, of female versus male perceivers. These speculations were tested more rigorously in the present study, which examined a larger set of 15 empathic accuracy studies and applied the techniques of quantitative meta‐analysis to test Graham and Ickes’(1997) moderating variable hypothesis. The hypothesis was strongly supported, consistent with a motivational interpretation previously proposed by Berman (1980) and by Eisenberg and Lemon (1983), which argues that reliable gender differences in empathy‐related measures are found only in situations in which (a) subjects are aware that they are being evaluated on an empathy‐relevant dimension, and/or (b) empathy‐relevant gender‐role expectations or obligations are made salient.     

Empathic Family Stress as a Sign of Family Connectedness in Haitian Immigrants

Research on familial experiences has documented the important role of receiving family support, but has not examined the effects of providing such support. Empathic family stress refers to the stress that individuals experience in response to difficult life circumstances of family members. The current study took a first step in examining the empathic family stress of 134 Haitian immigrants. Results from hierarchical regressions indicate that empathic family stress is a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, but not acculturative stress, for Haitian immigrants. Findings from the study are examined from a strengths-based perspective, where empathic family stress is viewed as a sign of strong family connections among Haitian immigrants. Recommendations are provided for clinicians working with Haitian immigrants to help them experience empathic family stress in a healthy manner.     

Dealing with conflicting information: young children's reliance on what they see versus what they are told

Children often learn about the world through direct observation. However, much of children's knowledge is acquired through the testimony of others. This research investigates how preschoolers weigh these two sources of information when they are in conflict. Children watched as an adult hid a toy in one location. Then the adult told children that the toy was in a different location (i.e. false testimony). When retrieving the toy, 4- and 5-year-olds relied on what they had seen and disregarded the adult's false testimony. However, most 3-year-olds deferred to the false testimony, despite what they had directly observed. Importantly, with a positive searching experience based on what they saw, or with a single prior experience with an adult as unreliable, 3-year-olds subsequently relied on their first-hand observation and disregarded the adult's false testimony. Thus, young children may initially be credulous toward others' false testimony that contradicts their direct observation, but skepticism can develop quickly through experience.     

Take If from Me: The Epistemological Status of Testimony

Testimony consists in imparting information without supplying evidence or argument to back one's claims. To what extent does testimony convey epistemic warrant? C. J. A. Coady argues, on Davidsonian grounds, that (1) most testimony is true, hence (2) most testimony supplies warrant sufficient for knowledge. I appeal to Grice's maxims to undermine Coady's argument and to show that the matter is more complicated and context‐sensitive than is standardly rocognized. Informative exchanges take place within networks of shared, tacit assumptions that affect the scope and strength of our claims, and the level of warrant required for their responsible assertion. The maxims explain why different levels of warrant are transferred in different contexts.     

Lexical norms,language comprehension,and the epistemology of testimony

It has recently been argued (for instance by Sanford Goldberg, expanding on earlier work by Tyler Burge) that public linguistic norms are implicated in the epistemology of testimony by way of underwriting the reliability of language comprehension. This paper argues that linguistic normativity, as such, makes no explanatory contribution to the epistemology of testimony, but instead emerges naturally out of a collective effort to maintain language as a reliable medium for the dissemination of knowledge. Consequently, the epistemologies of testimony and language comprehension are deeply intertwined from the start, and there is no room for grounding the one in terms of the other.     

No country for girly men: High instrumentality men express empathic concern when caring is “manly”

Two studies explored the relationship between men’s gender role identity (as measured by the Bem Sex Role Inventory) and their experience of empathic concern (situational empathy). In both, participants read of a man coping with his friend’s death while being exposed to one of three subliminal primes: “real men care”/“caring is strength,” “girly men care”/“caring is weakness,” or “people are walking.” Congruent with previous research, higher femininity (expressivity) predicted greater empathic concern irrespective of prime. The real men/strength primes tended to: (1) increase empathic concern among high instrumentality men; and (2) link empathic concern to predominantly positive projected coping responses when participants thought of themselves in the survivor’s situation, consistent with the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Thus, subtly framing empathic concern as a positive emotional response that is congruent with an agentic self-appraisal seems to boost traditionally masculine men’s willingness to experience it.     

Moral Expertise?: Constitutional Narratives and Philosophical Argument

Using the bench trial of Colorado's Amendment 2 as an example, this article focuses on the more general question of expert testimony in moral philosophy. It argues that there is indeed expertise in moral philosophy but argues against admitting such expert testimony in cases dealing with what John Rawls terms "constitutional essentials" and 'matters of basic justice." Developing the idea of public reason inherent in the Rawlsian concept of political liberalism, the article argues that philosophers can and should speak out on public issues, if they do so with due respect for certain restrictions, but that they should not serve as expert witnesses on core constitutional questions, since doing so suggests that they claim a type of authority that would require fellow citizens to defer to their views. Such claims to authority in basic ethical matters threaten the mutual respect for divergent comprehensive doctrines that lies at the core of political liberalism. Philosophers have a duty to serve the public good, and they perform this service in fruitful ways. But they should refuse a public role that appears incompatible with equal respect for the committed ethical searching of their fellow citizens.     

团体成员共情的影响因素及作用模型——基于扎根理论

本研究旨在探索团体咨询成员共情的概念、影响因素及其作用。运用扎根理论对11名团体咨询成员的访谈资料分析,共形成11个轴心编码。根据编码间的关系得到如下结果：1. 团体成员共情包括共情理解、共情表达和共情感知;2. 团体成员共情理解的影响因素为相似性、观点采择;共情感知的影响因素为相似性和共情表达;3. 团体成员共情通过促进成员关系、认知领悟和情感支持提升团体效果。据此构建了团体成员共情的影响因素及作用模型。     

INDEFENSIBLE MIDDLE GROUND FOR LOCAL REDUCTIONISM ABOUT TESTIMONY

Local reductionism purports to defend a middle ground in the debate about the epistemic status of testimony-based beliefs. It does so by acknowledging the practical ineliminability of testimony as a source of knowledge, while insisting that such an acknowledgment need not entail a default-acceptance view, according to which there exists an irreducible warrant for accepting testimony. The present paper argues that local reductionism is unsuccessful in its attempt to steer a middle path between reductionism and anti-reductionism about testimonial justification. In particular, it challenges local reductionism 'from within', without appealing to anti-reductionist intuitions. By offering novel arguments to the effect that local reductionism fails by its own standards, the present paper considerably strengthens the case against this version of reductionism. Local reductionism, it is argued, fails for three main reasons. First, it cannot account for the rationality of testimonial rejection in paradigmatic cases, even though the possibility of rational rejection is thought to be of central justificatory importance. Second, it does not provide a sufficiently distinct non-testimonial basis to which testimonial justification can be successfully reduced. Finally, local reductionism is shown to be an intrinsically unstable position, in danger of collapsing into full-fledged 'credulism' of the kind historically associated with Thomas Reid.     

Self psychology and projective identification—whither shall they meet? a reply to the editors (1995)

The concept of projective identification continues to be viewed as alien, even dangerous, by self psychologists. Six aspects of self‐psychology/intersubjectivity theory are explored in an attempt to understand the presumed incompatibility of self psychology and projective identification: 1) the empathic vantage point; 2) the focus on subjective reality; 3) the emphasis on the analyst's personal contribution; 4) the focus on selfobject experience; 5) the disruption—restoration process; and 6) the defining of transference and countertransference as “organizing activity.”; The self‐psychological/intersubjective concepts that come closest to describing the phenomenon of projective identification—that is, empathic immersion, affect resonance, and reciprocal mutual influence—fail to capture at least three of its essential elements 1) the patient's persistent, unconscious intent to communicate certain unformulated aspects of self through the other; 2) the analyst's sense of being “taken over”; by the patient's experience; and 3) the intensely visceral quality of the analyst's experience. It is argued that self psychology ignores this important form of patient communication to its own detriment and that the concept of projective identification needs to be reformulated in terms that are more experience near to self psychologists. It is suggested that there exists a normal, developmental need, a selfobject need, to communicate intolerable, unsymbolized affective experience through the other's experience—a need that remains more pervasive and intense in some of us than in others—and that the longed‐for selfobject response is to have one's communication received, contained, and given back in such a way that one knows the other has “gotten”; it from the inside out.