Elgin, Z. Catherine. Take it from me – the epistemological status of testimony
2002, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXV (2002), 291-308.
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Added by: Giada FratantonioSummary: In this paper, the author addresses the problem of to what provides epistemic justification for taking someone's testimony as true. That is, to what extent testimony provides conveys warrant? More precisely, the author argues, contra C. J. A. Coady, that testimony does not easily provide warrant in most of the cases, yet the whether a testimony conveys warrant is context-sensitive: different levels of warrant are transmitted in different contexts.Comment: This could work as secondary reading for a postgraduate course in epistemology, focusin on the epistemology of testimony.Kukla, Rebecca. Objectivity and perspective in empirical knowledge2006, Episteme 3 (1-2):80-95.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Wayne RiggsAbstract: Article: Epistemologists generally think that genuine warrant that is available to anyone must be available to everyone who is exposed to the relevant causal inputs and is able and willing to properly exercise her rationality. The motivating idea behind this requirement is roughly that an objective view is one that is not bound to a particular perspective. In this paper I ask whether the aperspectivality of our warrants is a precondition for securing the objectivity of our claims. I draw upon a Sellarsian account of perception in order to argue that it is not; rather, inquirers can have contingent properties and perspectives that give them access to forms of rational warrant and objective knowledge that others do not have. The universal accessibility of reasons, on my account, is not a precondition for the legitimacy of any actual warrant, but rather a regulative ideal governing inquiry and communicationComment:Zagzebski, Linda. The inescapability of Gettier Problems1994, Philosophical Quarterly 44 (174): 65-73.
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Added by: Jie GaoConclusion: Almost every contemporary theory of justification or warrant aims only to give the conditions for putting the believer in the best position for getting the truth. The best position is assumed to be very good, but imperfect, for such is life. Properly functioning faculties need not be working perfectly, but only well enough; reliable belief-producing mechanisms need not be perfectly reliable, only reliable enough; evidence for a belief need not support it conclusively, but only well enough; and so on. As long as the truth is never assured by the conditions which make the state justified, there will be situations in which a false belief is justified. I argue that with this common, in fact, almost universal assumption, Gettier cases will never go away.Comment: This is a great paper on the Gettier problem for epistemic justification. It is often used in combination with the original paper by Gettier in elucidating the nature of the Gettier problem. Suitable for undergraduate epistemology courses.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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