We will take up a variety of related issues, including epistemic normativity, the nature of reasons, the aim of belief, epistemic autonomy and authority, and the significance of reflection. Epistemic authority, testimony and the transmission of knowledge. Epistemic authority and understanding injustice at the tenth international conference gap. If you know that an expert believes p, then you should believe p the rough idea of an authority is as something that must be followed, or obeyed. The relevance of credibility excess in a proportional view of.
Authority, legitimacy and epistemic accounts of democratic. Zagzebski proposes an epistemic analogue of razs preemption thesis, which states that the fact that an authority has a belief p is a preemptive reason for me to believe p 107. A theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief 9780190278267. This position on epistemic modality is at odds with standard semantic treatments of modality, in which epistemic modality alongside other types of modality is seen as regularly contributing to truth conditions. In this book linda trinkaus zagzebski gives an extended argument that the selfreflective person is committed to belief on authority. One of the key tenets of linda zagzebskis book epistemic authority. Externalism, architecturalism, and epistemic warrant. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches please. A theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief 2012 is the preemption thesis for epistemic authority. It says that, when an agent learns that an epistemic authority believes that p, the rational response for her is to adopt that belief and to replace all of her previous reasons relevant to whether p by the reason that the authority believes that p. Epistemic authority hardcover linda trinkaus zagzebski oxford university press in this book linda trinkaus zagzebski gives an extended argument that the selfreflective person is committed to belief on authority. First book to apply the ideas of authority and autonomy as used in moral and political philosophy to the domain of belief. She argues that epistemic and emotional selftrust are rational and. Religious traditions in particular still exercise considerable epistemic authority over large sections of the population, albeit to varying degrees.
But perhaps this transparency feature is also what smith and pettit have in mind when they write that ones beliefs must occlude any doubts one might have about the rationality of those very beliefs. What is wanted is a criterion for being an epistemic. Origgi, gloria at highschool in italy many years ago i heard my teacher of latin say. Formally, epistemic authority is often expressed using expert principles, e. Epistemic community, in international relations, a network of professionals with recognized expertise and authoritative claims to policyrelevant knowledge in a particular issue area. Believing on another persons authority is of epistemological interest because, under certain. Havi carel, patient experience, the kings fund, illness, university of the west of england, epistemic injustice created date. The harms that excessive attributions of credibility can.
On these accounts, modal operators in natural language encode modal force. She also formulates epistemic analogues for razs normal justification thesis in order to. First book to apply the ideas of authority and autonomy as used. I strongly recommend it, especially to anyone who is interested in epistemic autonomy, epistemic authority, and the rational defensibility of faith and of believing on the authority of ones epistemic community. Giving people epistemic subjectivity instead of treating them as mere objects does not guarantee that their general. Epistemic authority a theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief linda trinkaus zagzebski. Epistemic justification in a functionalistic and naturalistic perspective 61 experience and fact 61 problems of commoncause epistemology 62 modes of justification 64 the evolutionary aspect of sensory epistemology 68 rational versus natural selection 69 against pureintellectualism 74 the problem of error 76 conclusion 78. In a western culture without any full monopoly on truth, and for a people wary of mainstream authorities, it proves opportune to draw on a wide variety of epistemic. Were we obliged constantly to retrace our cognitive steps, to reas. You go home to the suburbs with clean water and dont have to worry about whats in it. Epistemic authority, testimony and the transmission of. An epistemic community in international relations ir is a network of professionals with recognized knowledge and skill in a particular issuearea.
Sometimes it is epistemically beneficial to form a belief on authority. A theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief this book gives an extended argument for epistemic authority from the. A pure epistemic approach tells us that our social decision rules ought be chosen so as to track that fact goodin and list, epistemic democracy. Epistemic community international relations britannica. In other words, although god does not make things good, god as an omniscient being presumably would know what is independently good better than we fallible mortals do, and we might thus be well advised to respect divine instructions. One the focus of this paper is an account of the epistemically appropriate response to discovering that an epistemic authority holds certain beliefs. Epistemic authority hardcover linda trinkaus zagzebski.
Glancing, pointing, touching interviewers routinely orient to applicant files as they produce first pair parts e. In this chapter, i sketch some main elements of a longer argument to the. Epistemic criteria are compatible, at least in principle, with proceduralism. Why cant you believe our citys water is harming and poisoning us. According to the suggested account, to trust a speaker is to grant her epistemic authority on the asserted proposition, and hence to see her opinion as issuing a second order, preemptive reason for believing the proposition. Ideas with a politicizing portent for how we think about our epistemic relationsideas such as that epistemic trust might have an irrepressible connection with social power, or that social disadvantage can produce unjust epistemic disadvantagetend not to feature in the context of angloamerican epistemology. Epistemic authority, preemptive reasons, and understanding. Chapter 9 defends the possibility of authority over religious belief.
Pdf one of the key tenets of linda zagzebskis book epistemic authority. One of the key tenets of linda zagzebskis book epistemic authority is the preemption thesis. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic selfreliance is incoherent. The authority of memory david owens nothing is more common than for us to continue to believe without rehearsing the reasons which led us to believe in the first place.
Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips. Chapter 10 discusses the interaction of trust and disagreement. In a western culture without any full monopoly on truth, and for a people wary of mainstream authorities, it. It will generously reward a careful and thorough read. This may be the reason that commonsense definitions of. Linda zagzebskis highly ambitious book on epistemic authority manages to be both. Externalism, architecturalism, and epistemic warrant martin davies this paper addresses a problem about epistemic warrant. The virtue of epistemic trustworthiness in epistemic communities at. Indeed, an authoritys belief is significantly more. Since they both offer epistemic accounts, both face the challenge of showing why democracy rather than epistocracy is justified.
Nevertheless, i relied on my teachers intellectual authority to acquire the. Epistemic authority, preemptive reasons, and understanding christoph jager dept. Epistemic authority is rich, wideranging, and provocative. I take seriously the epistemic authority of women and girls who, in their everyday conversations, name such behavior as. Zagzebski argues that the major alleged sources of resistance to epistemic authority in the historical record are equivocal chapter 1, that trust in ones own epistemic faculties is rational chapter 2, that trust in ones own epistemic faculties rationally requires trust in others epistemic faculties chapter 3, and that trust in ones. But epistemology cannot rest satisfied with a list of the virtues.
The moral development of firstperson authority victoria mcgeer for any detailed description of the complexity of human nature, of the insurgence of instinct in the garb of reason, of the multifarious play of the social environment in the individual ego, and of the individual ego on the social environment, i had to turn to the novelists and the. Presumably, socratess advice like goves is not intended to be completely general. Individuals with a dualistic view of knowledge believe in rightorwrong knowledge handed down by authority. They share a set of beliefs, which provide a valuebased foundation for the actions of members.
The beliefs of epistemic authorities within their domains of authority are highly trustworthy. People generally agree that there is something valuable about thinking for oneself rather than simply accepting beliefs on authority, but it is not at all obvious. Moran uses this transparency feature to account for the special epistemic authority we all appear to have in the matter of what we ourselves believe. Request pdf epistemic authority in employment interviews. Epistemic community international relations wikipedia. Epistemic agency catherine z elgin harvard university, usa abstract virtue epistemologists hold that knowledge results from the display of epistemic virtues openmindedness, rigor, sensitivity to evidence, and the like. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. Havi carel talks about illness and epistemic injustice at the kings funds 5th annual transforming patient experience conference 2012 keywords. It says that, when an agent realizes that an epistemic authority believes that p, the epistemically rational response for her is to adopt the authoritys belief and to replace all of her previous reasons relevant to whether p by the reason that the authority believes that p.
She also formulates epistemic analogues for razs normal justification thesis in order to justify taking a belief on epistemic authority. The ultimate aim is to vindicate epistemic authority as a. A recent book by linda zagzebski, epistemic authority. Nelson describes an epistemic defense of democracy as one according to which. Chapter 11 seeks to connect epistemic authority with autonomy and to defend the latter against debunking arguments. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise cambridge core to connect with your account. Epistemic authority and thinking for oneself philosophical lecture read 26 june 2018 ursula coope abstract. I had a vague idea of what a synecdoche was, and ignored until then that one could characterize ciceros writing in this way. Estlunds epistemic proceduralism and habermass discourse theory offer us, in particular regarding the question of the authority and legitimacy of democracy. Introduction assume that for many choices faced by a political community, some alter natives are better than others by standards that are in some way objective. Thus, rather than supposing that the legitimacy of an outcome nds on its the modem schoolma11. Often, accounts of such epistemic authority suggest that it is constituted by a connection to a certain set of true beliefs. Validation of the chinese version of the epistemic beliefs. Epistemic definition of epistemic by the free dictionary.
While the fourth question asserts a possible answer to the question with some degree of certainty, and thus embodies a much smaller or flatter epistemic gradient. Perry 1970 has delineated the developmental trajectory of epistemic beliefs into four stages. Holliday university of california, berkeley abstract this chapter provides a brief introduction to propositional epistemic logic and its applications to epistemology. In general, declarative questions claim a more nearly equal epistemic footing with the. In section 1, i introduce zagzebskis innovative definition of epistemic authority, which clearly distinguishes authorities from experts in the epistemic domain.
A theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief 2012 is the. Before you combine the files into one pdf file, use merge pdf to draganddrop pages to reorder or to delete them as you like. Imposed silences and shared hermeneutical responsibilities. The problem is posed by philosophical arguments for externalism about the contents of thoughts, and similarly by philosophical arguments for architecturalism about thinking, when these arguments are. Epistemic proceduralism and democratic authority david estlund 2. Such professionals may have different backgrounds and may be located in different countries, but they share a set. All uploads and downloads are deemed secure and files are permanently deleted from the smallpdf servers within an hour.