TRUST AND TESTIMONY

Some recent accounts of testimonial warrant base it on trust, and claim that doing so helps explain asymmetries between the intended recipient of testimony and other non‐intended hearers, e.g. differences in their entitlement to challenge the speaker or to rebuke the speaker for lying. In this explanation ‘dependence‐responsiveness’ is invoked as an essential feature of trust: the trustor believes the trustee to be motivationally responsive to the fact that the trustor is relying on the trustee. I argue that dependence‐responsiveness is not essential to trust and that the asymmetries, where genuine, can be better explained without reference to trust.     

PROBLEMS OF SINCERITY

ABSTRACT It is undeniable that the assumption of sincerity is important to assertion, and that assertion is central to the transmission of beliefs through human testimony. Discussions of testimony, however, often assume that the epistemic importance of sincerity to testimony is that of a (fallible) guarantee of access to the actual beliefs of the speaker. Other things being equal, we would do as well or better if we had some kind of unmediated access to the beliefs of the other person, without the risks involved in the overt act of speaking, and the assumption of sincerity in speech is the closest we can come to this access. Contrary to this picture, I argue that sincerity has a quite different epistemic role to play in testimony than that of an indicator of the speaker's beliefs. The epistemology of testimony requires reference to the speaker as agent, and not just the speaker's beliefs, as well as a sense of 'expression of belief that links it to the specifically addressive relation to another person.     

误导信息和源检测影响证言准确性的实验研究

通过操纵信息类型与测试类型两个自变量,探讨误导信息和源检测对证言准确性、自信程度的影响,同时研究了心理控制源、焦虑、自尊与证言准确性、自信程度的相关.研究发现,误导信息是影响证言准确性的重要因素,自信程度与心理控制源、自尊之间存在正相关.     

TESTIMONY,MEMORY AND THE LIMITS OF THE A PRIORI

Philosophical Studies -     

THE NATURE OF TESTIMONY

Abstract:  I discuss several views of the nature of testimony and show how each proposal has importantly different problems. I then offer a diagnosis of the widespread disagreement regarding this topic; specifically, I argue that our concept of testimony has two different aspects to it. Inadequate views of testimony, I claim, result either from collapsing these two aspects into a single account or from a failure to recognize one of them. Finally, I develop an alternative view of testimony that captures both aspects of the nature of testimony and thereby provides the basis for an illuminating theory of testimony's epistemological significance.     

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.     

REDUCTIONISM AND HOLISM,CHANCE AND SELECTION,MECHANISM AND MIND

Abstract. Despite its rich and deepening panoply of empirical support, evolutionary theory continues to generate widespread concern. Some of this concern can be attributed to misunderstandings of the original concept, some to unfamiliarity with its current trajectories, and some to strongly held fears that it strips the human of cherished attributes. In this essay I seek to deconstruct such misunderstandings, lift up current concepts of what evolution entails, and address some of the existential issues it generates.     

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND INFERTILITY MYTHS AND REALITIES

Psychoanalysis, long interested in infertility, and a valuable treatment for men and women suffering with this affliction, has also helped to create and support a myth of psychogenic infertility. Multiple causes of infertility exist across the physiological - psychological spectrum. There is no simple psychodynamic causality. Advances in assisted reproductive technologies provide treatments that create emotional stress and outpace psychological preparedness of patients and analysts. This paper is based on the experience of a unique study group in Boston. An analytic case illustrates some of the ways analysis can be a treatment of choice for people using assisted reproduction. In fact, analysis offers a unique opportunity to elaborate fully the complex realities and dilemmas faced by people and their therapists throughout the infertility experience. More generally, this study of the concept of psychogenic infertility explores a valuable role for psychoanalysis in the treatment of medical conditions.