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Testimony, evidence and interpersonal reasons

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Abstract

According to the Interpersonal View of Testimony (IVT), testimonial justification is non-evidential in nature. I begin by arguing that the IVT has the following problem: If the IVT is true, then young children and people with autism cannot participate in testimonial exchanges; but young children and people with autism can participate in testimonial exchanges; thus, the IVT should be rejected on the grounds that it has over-cognized what it takes to give and receive testimony. Afterwards, I consider what I take to be the two best motivations for the IVT and argue that they both fail. The overarching lesson, then, is that the IVT is unmotivated and false; we should think of testimonial justification as being evidential in nature.

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Notes

  1. For the purpose of this paper I will use “justified” and “warranted” interchangeably. It is also worth noting that “evidence” should be understood very broadly here, i.e., in the context of this debate, reductionists, non-reductionists, dualists, reliabilists, and transmission theorists can be understood as endorsing versions of the EVT.

  2. See Ross (1986), Hinchman (2005, 2014), Moran (2005), Faulkner (2007, 2011), Zagzebski (2012) and McMyler (2011, 2013) for defenses of the IVT. While there are important differences between some of these views [Faulkner (2007, 2011) endorses and then builds upon Moran (2005), for instance], the arguments given below are meant to target what I take to be the heart of all versions of the IVT.

  3. See Moran (2005) and Faulkner (2007, 2011).

  4. See Ross (1986).

  5. See Hinchman (2005).

  6. See Lackey (2008, ch. 8), Schmitt (2010) and Keren (2012) who object to the IVT on importantly different grounds.

  7. See also Hinchman (2014, p. 14) for more on this analysis.

  8. More slowly, in order for S to satisfy the conditions in T, S must have the following intentions. First, in uttering that p, S has to intend for her audience, A, to gain access to a non-evidential, epistemic reason for belief [i.e., (ii)]. Second, S has to intend that A believe that she is intending to give them a non-evidential reason for belief [i.e., (iii)]. And third, S has to intend that A gain access to this reason because A believes that she is intending to give them a non-evidential reason for belief [i.e., (iv)]. Thus, in order for S to satisfy the conditions in T, it must be the case that S can attribute a second-order mental state to A.

  9. More slowly, if A is going to satisfy the conditions in T, A must have the following beliefs. First, A has to believe that S is asserting that p [i.e., (i)]. Second, A has to believe that in asserting that p, S intends for A to gain access to a reason to believe that p [i.e., (i) and (ii)]. Third, A has to believe that in asserting that p, S intends for A to recognize that she is intending for A to gain access to a reason to believe that p [i.e., (i)-(iii)]. And fourth, A has to believe that in asserting that p, S intends for A to gain access to this reason because A recognized that she is intending for A to gain access to a reason for p. Thus, in order for A to satisfy the condition in T, A must be able to attribute a higher-order mental state to S.

  10. See also Miller (2012, Ch. 2–4) for a discussion of the literature regarding people with autism and their ability to attribute both first and second order mental states to others.

  11. The thought that children can give and receive testimony is one that is widely held in the literature. See Lackey (2005), Goldberg (2008), Graham (2000, p. 376) for a nice discussion of this point. It is also worth noting that at least some proponents of the IVT explicitly endorse this position too, e.g., Ross (1986, p. 87).

  12. See Miller (2009, 2012) for a summary of this research.

  13. See, for instance, Koenig et al. (2004).

  14. See, for instance, Clement et al. (2004).

  15. See Happé (1993, 1995) for more here.

  16. See Tager-Flusberg et al. (1993) for more here.

  17. See, for instance, Baron-Cohen (1993).

  18. See Perner (1993) and Leslie and Roth (1993) for more here.

  19. See Glüer and Pagin (2003) for a useful overview of the empirical data that supports that claim that while people with autism lack the capacity to attribute higher-order mental states to others, they are nevertheless competent language users.

  20. The spirit of this response comes from Hinchman’s (2014) distinction between truth-conducive and closure-conducive reliability. According to Hinchman (2014, p. 3), when a speaker’s utterance manifests truth-conducive reliability, i.e., the type of reliability that is relevant to one’s need to believe the truth, then her utterance that p can warrant both her addressee and an eavesdropper in believing that p, regardless of whether any assurance or invitation to trust was offered. However, when the speaker’s utterance manifests closure-conducive reliability, i.e., the type of reliability that is relevant to one’s need to end doxastic deliberation, then her utterance that p can only warrant her addressee in believing that p, and this is because the speaker offered an assurance to her addressee and nobody else.

    Of course, this is not to say that Hinchman himself must endorse this distinction between multiple kinds of testimonial justification, but just that his (2014) points to a one prima facie plausible way in which this line of thought can be developed.

  21. See McMyler (2011, pp. 94–102, 2013) and Moran (2005, p. 24) for a defense of this claim. Moran, for instance, makes this point when he says that:

    The disharmony between speaker and audience entailed by the Evidential View comes out in the consideration of two possible responses to receiving a promise. If someone promises to mail a letter for me, one thing I might do is accept his promise, placing myself in his hands and taking myself to now have sufficient reason for believing that he will mail the letter. If it turns out he doesn’t mail the letter, either through carelessness or because he never really intended to, then I will feel aggrieved and let down. This is the ordinary expectation and liability to disappointment. I might, however, opt for another kind of response altogether. Here I don’t accept the promise; I simply don’t go in for that sort of thing, as I may not accept promises from a small child or (for different reasons) from someone I despise, but in another way I do take seriously the fact that he made one to me. In this spirit I may reason: “He is unlikely to make a promise he won’t fulfill, since that would discredit him as a future promisor, and there are great and obvious advantages in remaining someone whose promises are accepted. Therefore, the fact that he made this promise to me makes it probable that he will in fact mail the letter. So I believe he will.” If, on this second scenario, I later discover that he did not mail the letter after all, my reaction will be different. I will be disappointed, of course, and I will be surprised that he would discredit himself in this way. But I can’t confront him with my complaint or my resentment because I never accepted the promise in the first place.

  22. As Moran (2005, p. 7) puts it:

    … it is essential to the distinctive reason for belief that I get from assertion that it proceeds from something freely undertaken by the other person…Evidence, by contrast, is not dependent on presentation in this way. A phenomenon will count as evidence however it came about, whether by natural causes or by someone’s deliberate action, or just as easily by his inadvertence or carelessness. But nothing can count as someone’s assurance that was not freely presented as such.

  23. See Faulkner (2011), Moran (2005, pp. 21–22) and Ross (1986, p. 72). As Moran puts it:

    When all goes well in testimony, a speaker gives his audience a reason to believe something, but unlike other ways of influencing the beliefs of others, in this case the reason the audience is provided is seen by both parties as dependent on the speaker’s making himself accountable, conferring a right of complaint on his audience should his claim be false.

    And Ross says that:

    The main problem with the idea that the hearer views the speaker’s words as evidence arises from the fact that, unlike the examples of natural signs which spring most readily to mind, saying something is a deliberate act under the speaker’s conscious control and the hearer is aware that this is the case. The problem is not that of whether the hearer can in these circumstances see the speaker’s words as good evidence; it is a question of whether the notion of evidence is appropriate here at all.

  24. This is not to say that the audience cannot take S’s utterance that p as evidence for p. Rather, it is just to say that when S tells her audience that p (in the sense specified by T), the reason that is generated by this speech act only counts in favor of p because of S’s communicative intentions.

  25. This is not to say that Nathan might also have the right to make additional complaints about Dr. Biasman that Amy lacks, e.g., perhaps Nathan also has other legitimate rights of complaint against Dr. Biasman insofar as it was immoral and imprudent for him to treat Nathan like he did. Rather, the point of CLASSMATES is just that insofar as receiving testimony can generate a right of complaint, Nathan and Amy both have the exact same right.

  26. Perhaps Hinchman (2014) could argue that because Dr. Biasman offered Amy but not Nathan an invitation to trust, Dr. Baisman’s testimony gives Amy but not Nathan sufficient warrant for ending her doxastic deliberation about when the test will be administered; that is, perhaps only Amy can rely on Dr. Biasman’s closure-conducive reliability whereas both of them can rely on Dr. Biasman’s truth-conducive reliability. If so, then perhaps there is a reason to think that Amy and Nathan do have different types of epistemic reasons for holding their beliefs.

    I think there are two ways of resisting this line of thought. The first is to point out that it is unclear why Dr. Biasman’s utterance could not also provide Nathan with sufficient warrant for ending his doxastic deliberation about whether there is going to be a test tomorrow; insofar as Dr. Baisman is aware that Amy and Nathan both have the same standards when it comes to deliberating about when the test is going to be given, it is not obviously true that in this case Nathan cannot also rely on Dr. Biasman’s closure-conducive reliability even though Dr. Biasman did not offer him an assurance. Moreover, even if this response fails, the spirit of the TD would still remain; if Nathan had autism, he could not rely on Dr. Biasman’s closure-conducive reliability, since he could not satisfy the conditions in T. But then appealing to closure-conducive reliability as a way of distinguishing types of testimonial justification will still problematically exclude certain people from acquiring something of epistemic importance.

  27. Could the proponent of the IVT just say that Dr. Biasman could not possibly have these intentions? That is, could the proponent of the IVT argue that insofar as Dr. Biasman intends to offer Amy an assurance, then given that Nathan is sitting right next to her, Dr. Biasman must be intending to invite Nathan to trust him as well?

    No. For even if it is unlikely, it is clearly metaphysically possible for a professor to issue an invitation to trust to one student but not another, regardless of how close these students are sitting to each other. To put this point another way, recall that, according to the IVT, testifying is analogous to promising in the sense that it is only if the speaker addresses her utterance to an audience that the relevant speech act has completed itself, e.g., according to the IVT, an audience cannot acquire testimonial justification if the speaker did not intend for them to do so. But if this is the case, then since Dr. Biasman can clearly make a promise to Amy but not to Nathan, there is no reason to think that he could not testify to Amy but not to Nathan too. Thus, by their own lights, proponents of the IVT should not endorse this line of response.

  28. For instance, given Hinchman’s (2014) distinction between truth-conducive and closure conducive reliability, perhaps the proponent of the IVT could say that it is only when the conditions in T are satisfied that an audience can rely on the speaker’s closure-conducive reliability in order to acquire sufficient warrant to end their doxastic deliberation about whether p. But insofar is acquiring warrant that is sufficient to end one’s doxastic deliberation is epistemically significant, there does not seem to be any reason to think that children or people with autism could not acquire this kind of warrant either. Thus, the spirit of the TD will remain.

    Or, suppose that proponents of the IVT maintain that it is only when the conditions in T are satisfied that a hearer can acquire the epistemic right to pass the buck, i.e., perhaps it is only when the conditions in T are satisfied that a hearer can legitimately defer certain challenges back to the speaker from whom she acquired the belief in question (e.g., McMyler 2011). If so, then the IVT could be motivated by the thought that the IVT but not the EVT can explain how this epistemic right of deferral can be acquired.

    But again, if one can only acquire this right of deferral if the conditions in T are satisfied (which the proponent of the IVT must say if the phenomenon of buck passing is going to distinguish the IVT from the EVT), then the IVT will still problematically exclude children and people with autism from acquiring something of epistemic importance. For insofar as children and people with autism seem to have the same right to pass the buck as any other hearer does, then maintaining that this right can only be acquired if the conditions in T are satisfied is too strong. Thus, the spirit of the TD will remain. [See Goldberg (2006) for a defense of the epistemic significance of buck passing that is neutral on the nature of testimonial justification.] Thanks to an anonymous referee for a helpful discussion of this last point.

  29. What is the relationship between testimony and assertion? Some (e.g., Fricker 1987; Sosa 1994) are sympathetic with the idea that the two are identical, while others have endorsed the weaker claim that testifying implies asserting (e.g., Goldberg 2015, ch. 3). I do not want to take a stand on this issue here. For so long as there is some epistemic norm that governs testimony, the argument in this section will go through regardless.

  30. E.g., Douvan (2006), Williamson (1996), Lackey (2007), Stanley (2008), Kvanvig (2009), Goldberg (2015).

  31. E.g., Douvan (2006).

  32. E.g., Kvanvig (2009).

  33. E.g., Lackey (2007).

  34. E.g., Williamson (1996).

  35. E.g., Stanley (2008).

  36. See the overhearer cases in Lackey (2008) and Owens (2006), as well as a discussion of this point in Goldberg (2015, ch. 3). The point here is that many others will also take it to be a virtue of this account that addressees and overhearers can both acquire the same right of complaint against a speaker.

  37. This line of thought is inspired by an argument made Goldberg (2015, ch. 3).

  38. I am grateful to Amy Floweree, Baron Reed, Fabrizio Cariani, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Nathan Weston, Rebecca Mason, Sandy Goldberg, Stephen White, and an anonymous referee for very instructive feedback. I am especially grateful to Jennifer Lackey, who gave me helpful comments on too many earlier drafts.

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Leonard, N. Testimony, evidence and interpersonal reasons. Philos Stud 173, 2333–2352 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0611-1

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