Abstract
The aim of the paper is to propose a way in which believing on trust can ground doxastic justification and knowledge. My focus will be the notion of trust that plays the role depicted by such cases as concerned Hardwig (J Philos 82:335–49, 1985; J Philos 88:693–708, 1991) in his early papers, papers that are often referenced in recent debates in social epistemology. My primary aim is not exegetical, but since it sometimes not so clear what Hardwig’s claims are, I offer some remarks of interpretation that might be of interest. The main purpose of the paper, however, is this: following various cues in Hardwig’s writing, I specify certain epistemic properties of agents in social systems, such that, roughly speaking, for agents to know (or be justified in believing) what the ‘system knows’, social relations of epistemic trust between agents in the system are necessary. I will suggest that we can view this social form of epistemic trust as non-inferential dispositions to believe what some individual or other source of information asserts or transmits. When this disposition is discriminating and defeater-sensitive, it can ground knowledge and justification. Or, more cautiously, we should be sympathetic to this view if we are inclined to accept the core insight of process reliabilism. Finally, I will offer some remarks about how epistemic trust and epistemic reasons may relate on this picture.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The impression that trust has dropped out of the picture is also conveyed by Hardwig’s own summary of the transmission of knowledge in social systems (Hardwig 1991, p. 699):
(1) A knows that B says that p.
(2) A believes (and has good reasons to believe?) that B is speaking truthfully, i.e., that B is saying what she believes.
(3) A believes (and has good reasons to believe?) that B (unlike A) is in a position, first, to know what would be good reasons to believe p and, second, to have the needed reasons.
(4) A believes (and has good reasons to believe?) that B actually has good reasons for believing p when she thinks she does.
Again, no mention of trust or epistemic trust is made in these principles. Note also the curious fact that the antecedents in (2), (3), (4) do not correspond to (T), though the paranteses do (ignoring the question marks).
For consistency reasons, we can make an exception for Ac, such that (3\('\)) reads: with the exception of \(\hbox {A}_{\mathrm{c}}\), no other agent knows or justifiably believe that \(\hbox {A}_{\mathrm{c}}\) is justified in believing that the proper evidential relationship between \(\hbox {P}_{1}-\hbox {P}_{\mathrm{n}}\) and the conclusion C actually holds.
Hardwig defends an affirmative answer to the first question roughly as follows. Say that an agent A is trustworthy with respect to some domain of facts D just in case the agent (on request) reports her beliefs regarding D in a truthful, competent, and conscientious manner (Hardwig 1991, p. 700). Generally speaking, then, if an agent A is trustworthy, then if A reports that p, A is justified in her belief that p, or knows that p. In science, could one know or have first hand justified beliefs that some other researcher in some entirely different speciality than one’s own, is trustworthy? Often the answer is ‘No’ (Hardwig 1991, pp. 701–702). Hardwig considers and rejects some reasons that might suggest otherwise. Does game-theoretic reasons show that individual researchers have prudential reasons to become and remain trustworthy? Often the answer is ‘No’. Defection from cooperation may be detected too rarely, and there are too few interactions (Hardwig 1991, p. 702). Are there deterrents or safeguards in the regulation of science that would effectively detect or prevent fraudulent characters, thus grounding an assumption that scientists are generally trustworthy? It seems not (Hardwig 1991, pp. 703–705). So, the conclusion is that scientific communities (or sets of such communities) might often be social systems like S\('\). Although researchers may believe that other researchers are trustworthy, they often do not have first hand justification for such beliefs, and they do not know that others are truthsworthy. At best, this is just something they merely believe, or hope.
As a reviewer pointed out, one could imagine other doxastic accounts of epistemic trust. One might say, for example, that A trusts B just in case A believes that B is trustworthy, though A’s belief need have no special pedigree, and therefore no special epistemic status. As I have stipulated S\('\), nothing rules out that agents could trust each other in this slim sense. The challenge for this form trust is how it would explain that it can ground knowledge (assuming that we want our account of trust to explain this). Presumably, more conditions would need to be added.
Thanks to Mikkel Gerken for suggesting that this is a more natural strategy.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for rasing this worry.
See the related discussion in (Goldberg 2010)
This parallels the strategy in (Goldberg 2010), to which my exposition here owes a lot.
In a comment to Hardwig’s papers, Goldman remarks that Hardwig’s notion of blind trust would seem to have skeptical implications, since trusting blindly is incompatible with rational justification (Goldman 2001, p. 86). However, this remark did not seem to concern the sort of process reliabilist take on epistemic trust proposed here. Of course, Goldman might object to Goldberg’s claim that process reliabilists are committed to accepting the extendedness hypothesis. But even so, he should welcome epistemic trust as laid out here, even with the sort of blindness and social dependency that pertains to it. This view as such does not commit to the extendedness hypothesis.
One should bear in mind that we should probably not view these theories as competing theories concerning the same subject matter, but rather as attempts to conceptualise slightly different phenomena
The argument in this paragraph arose from discussions with Paul Faulkner on an early draft of his. See the related discussion in Faulkner 2011, Chapter 6, see especially pp. 153–159 and pp. 161–167). Note that my conception of trust id different from Faulkner’s on a number of points.
References
Adler, J. (1994). Testimony, trust, knowing. Journal of Philosophy, 91(5), 264–275.
Burge, T. (1993). Content preservation. Philosophical Review, 102(4), 457–488.
Faulkner, P. (2007). A genealogy of trust. Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, 4(3), 305–321.
Faulkner, P. (2011). Knowledge on trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foley, R. (2001). Intellectual trust in oneself and others. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Fricker, E. (2006). Testimony and epistemic autonomy. In J. Lackey & E. Sosa (Eds.), The epistemology of testimony (pp. 225–250). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, S. (2010). Relying on others: An essay in epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldman, A. I. (1979). What is justified belief. In G. Pappas (Ed.), Justification and knowledge. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Goldman, A. I. (1986). Epistemology and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goldman, A. (2001). Experts: Which ones should you trust? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63(1), 85–110.
Hardin, R. (1996). Trustworthiness. Ethics, 107(1), 26–42.
Hardwig, J. (1985). Epistemic dependence. Journal of Philosophy, 82, 335–349.
Hardwig, J. (1991). The role of trust in knowledge. Journal of Philosophy, 88(12), 693–708.
Holton, R. (1994). Deciding to trust, coming to believe. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72(1), 63–76.
Kappel, K. (2010). On saying that someone knows: Themes from Craig. In D. Pritchard, A. Millar, & A. Hughes (Eds.), Social epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sperber, D., Clément, F., et al. (2010). Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language, 25(4), 359–393.
Acknowledgments
Research on this paper has been generously funded by the Velux Foundation. I thank participants at these events for patience and helpful comments [in alphabetical order]: Kristoffer Ahlström, Finn Collin, Paul Faulkner, Axel Gelfert, Mikkel Gerken, Sandy Goldberg, Kathrine Hawley, Chris Kelp, Arnon Keren, Jennifer Lackey, Brent Madison, Kirk Michelian, Martin Kusch, Duncan Pritchard, Gloria Orrigi, Ernest Sosa, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen, Shane Ryan, Sebastian Rödl, Chris Thompson, Michael Williams, Frank Zenker.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Earlier versions of this material was presented at a departmental seminar, a SERG Workshop on epistemic trust, December 2010, the 3rd Copenhagen Conference in Epistemology, August 15–17 2011, and 2nd Berlin Conference on Meta-Epistemology, September 1–3 2011.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kappel, K. Believing on trust. Synthese 191, 2009–2028 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0376-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0376-z