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Abstract
The fact that much of our knowledge is gained through the testimony of others challenges a certain form of epistemic individualism. We are clearly not autonomous knowers. But the discussion surrounding testimony has maintained a commitment to what I have elsewhere called epistemic agent individualism. Both the reductionist and the anti‐reductionist have focused their attention on the testimony of individuals. But groups, too, are sources of testimony—or so I shall argue. If groups can be testifiers, a natural question to ask is whether our beliefs based on the testimony of groups are ever justified and whether such a justification is to be conferred inferentially or non‐inferentially. I consider and dismiss the possibility of extending an anti‐reductionist account of justification to our group testimonial beliefs. I also argue against a version of reductionism that would have our group testimonial beliefs justified only in so far as we were able to monitor the trustworthiness of members of the group. However, there are forms of reductionism that can be extended to make sense of the justification of our group testimonial beliefs. There are mechanisms for monitoring the trustworthiness and competency of a group (rather than its members) and, further, a variety of background beliefs allow us to assess the testimony of a group for reliability.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Kay Mathiesen and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments. The author is also grateful to David Henderson, Sandford Goldberg, George Pappas, and Christopher Tollefsen for their comments and suggestions on various drafts of this paper.
Notes
[1] Burge (Citation1993) and others make a distinction between warrant and justification. Justification, for Burge, is an internalist notion; warrant an externalist. Because I am not concerned with this distinction here, I will use the terms interchangeably.
[2] To make the discussion tractable I will focus on the testimony debate regarding justification and leave the issue of knowledge aside.
[3] For a discussion of this form of individualism, see Schmitt (Citation1994).
[4] See Pappas (Citation2000) for a discussion of epistemic deference in which he discusses deference to a group. In so far as epistemic deference is distinguished from testimony, Pappas’ account does not stand as an exception to my generalization.
[5] Those familiar with the literature on collective intentionality will see the similarity between summative accounts of group attitudes (We believe that p means that all or some of the members of our group believe p) and the summative account of group testimony.
[6] There are a variety of accounts of the nature of testimony on offer. For a very good discussion of these accounts and problems associated with them, see Lackey (Citation2006). For the purposes of this paper I will adopt the definition of testimony advocated by Elizabeth Fricker (Citation1995). According to Fricker, the domain of testimony is that of tellings‐in‐general with no restriction on subject matter nor on the speaker’s relation to it (Citation1995, 401). This is what Lackey has described as the broad view of testimony (Citation2006, 179).
[7] It has been suggested that if no member believes the content of the report then this would give us good reason for thinking that the report is not a reliable source and that the group is not reliable. Indeed, group members are probably in the best position to assess the reliability of their group. They know the procedures. If they do not believe the outcome of their research or decision‐making procedures, why should we? If we found out that the members of the group were skeptical regarding the group’s testimony then this would give us reason to be skeptical as well. The question here is whether the individual’s skepticism would lead us to deny that the utterance or report (the piece of testimony) was the group’s testimony at all. In so far as an individual can testify to something that they know to be false, a group might testify to something that they know is false as well. But it would still count as the testimony of the group.
[8] My point here is not that group testimony never coincides with the views of its members (surely it often does), but that even if it did there is more to group testimony than the sum of the individual’s testimony or what they would individually testify to.
[9] What does it mean for a group to sanction a piece of testimony? Sanctioning can take a variety of forms. It may be that each member accepts that p is the testimony of the group, or in some cases an authority within the group may have the right to sanction a piece of group testimony. Sanctioning can also take place by those outside of the group. The president of the United States has the authority to sanction particular groups to speak on particular issues.
[10] See Bezuidenthout (Citation1998) for an argument that communication is not a purely preservative process.
[11] Indeed, if Henderson (Citation2006) is correct then even an anti‐reductionist will be forced to admit that there are background cognitive processes (that monitor testimony) in play even when the default position holds. “If one is to systematically arrive at justified beliefs (in the way that anti‐reductionism envisions), one must have in play processes that not only accept testimony when the default position is satisfied, but also processes that detect when the default is not satisfied and inhibit testimonial belief formation accordingly” (Henderson Citation2006, 8)
[12] See, for instance, Elizabeth Fricker (Citation1987).
[13] See, for instance, Henderson (Citation2006).
[14] Views that require testimony is analyzed via a Bayesian process (Goldman Citation1999) can also be considered to require a form of monitoring on behalf of the hearer.
[15] The pragmatic concerns have been raised in conjunction with Fricker’s monitoring requirement at the level of individual testimony. If Fricker requires a special effort of the hearer, then it casts doubt on the plausibility of her view. It simply is not possible to check sources all the time. However, if her monitoring requires only a “counterfactual sensitivity” that if there were signs of deceit the hearer would pick them up, then it is not clear that her view is all that different from other forms of reductionism.
[16] One might object that The Iowa Electronic Market does not seem to be a group in the same sense as the UN Population Commission does, and so it does not seem to be offering testimony. But the organization that runs the Market could offer it as “their” testimony. The members of the Iowa Electronic Market could organize so as to issue the results as “their” view. In that case it is still true that the reliability of the testimony of the Iowa Electronic Market is not something that can be determined on the basis of the reliability of each member’s individual testimony on this issue. Thanks to Kay Mathiesen for suggesting this way of responding to this objection.
[17] Talk of unreliable people is a bit sloppy. What I mean by this is that the processes by which their beliefs were formed were unreliable.
[18] Thanks to Sanford Goldberg for suggesting this and for suggesting the reductive approach in general.
[19] Some would argue that there are not enough incentives in place to promote truth telling in the market place. Perhaps this is so. My point here is that there are some incentives in place and this provides the basis for a justification for our group testimonial beliefs.
[20] I do not think, for instance, that our representatives in Congress were very good at monitoring the testimony of the CIA regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This, however, is an empirical claim and not something I can substantiate here.