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cross_type 4.52 — strongly supporting 22 facts
Jennifer Lackey is a prominent philosopher who has extensively researched and published on the epistemological problems of testimony, as evidenced by her analysis of testimonial knowledge-preservationists [1], her defense of specific approaches to testimonial-based justification {fact:3, 10}, and her use of thought experiments to challenge existing theories of testimony {fact:13, 15}.
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Epistemology of Testimony | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 19 facts
quoteJennifer Lackey (2005) states: “non–reductionists maintain that testimony is just as basic a source of justification (knowledge, warrant, entitlement, and so forth) as sense-perception, memory, inference, and the like”.
claimJennifer Lackey describes a case where a person retains perceptually-based beliefs despite having evidence that their perception is radically unreliable.
claimJennifer Lackey defends a hybrid view of testimony that distinguishes between 'hearer testimony' and 'speaker testimony'.
claimJennifer Lackey defends a conservative approach to testimony against the 'infants-and-young-children' objection by examining whether similar problems afflict any approach to testimonial-based justification that includes a non-defeater condition.
claimA second liberal route to resist Jennifer Lackey's argument is to claim that young children are in principle capable of appreciating reasons or defeaters, but possess a poor inductive base regarding confirmed reports.
claimJennifer Lackey (2006) endorses the argument that testimony requires higher epistemic demands than perception because people can lie, whereas the physical environment cannot.
perspectiveJennifer Lackey disputes the account of knowledge as the norm of assertion, as proposed by Timothy Williamson, by arguing that it is proper for a testifier to assert a proposition even if they do not know or believe it, provided the testimony is reliable.
quoteRobert Audi argues against the possibility of gaining knowledge from the biology teacher in Jennifer Lackey's example, stating: “If … [the students] simply take [the teacher’s] word, they are taking the word of someone who will deceive them when job retention requires it…. It is highly doubtful that this kind of testimonial origin would be an adequate basis of knowledge.”
claimJennifer Lackey (2006) identifies Welbourne (1979, 1981, 1994), Hardwig (1985, 1991), Ross (1986), Burge (1993, 1997), Plantinga (1993), McDowell (1994), Williamson (1996), Audi (1997), Owens (2000), and Dummett (1994) as preservationists, defined as those who hold that for a speaker to transmit knowledge, the speaker must know the proposition in question.
referenceGreen (2006) defends responses to Jennifer Lackey's examples by arguing that a hearer takes the testifier as an agent, and therefore the hearer is responsible for the testifier's misbehavior if they trust a misbehaving testifier.
claimJennifer Lackey provides examples where a testifier is gripped by skeptical worries or believes their perceptual abilities are faulty.
claimThe 'Not-Testimony' response to Jennifer Lackey's biology teacher example suggests that the teacher is not actually testifying, but rather acting as a conduit for the school board, which is the true testifier.
claimJennifer Lackey presents a second thought experiment involving a person who suffers from matching misperceptions and pathological lies, where the person consistently misidentifies zebras as elephants but has a pathological urge to tell people that what she sees are zebras.
claimJennifer Lackey presents examples where a testifier (T) suffers from skeptical worries or believes their perceptual abilities are faulty, which challenges whether a hearer (S) can acquire knowledge from that testifier's testimony.
claimJennifer Lackey argues that a general inductive basis for belief in testimony fails because the category of testimonially-based beliefs is too heterogeneous to support a single, relevant induction.
claimJennifer Lackey defends a conservative approach to testimony against the objection that it places improper epistemic demands on young children who lack the capacity to evaluate the reliability of testifiers.
claimJennifer Lackey argues that if young children or animals cannot satisfy a 'positive-reasons demand' for testimony-based beliefs because they cannot appreciate reasons, they are also unable to satisfy a 'no-defeater condition' regarding normative or doxastic defeaters.
claimTestimonial knowledge-preservationists, as listed by Jennifer Lackey in 2003, argue that for a subject S to know a proposition p via testimony, the testifier T must themselves know that p, or satisfy a similar non-testimonial condition.
claimJennifer Lackey presents a thought experiment involving a biology teacher who does not believe in evolution but teaches it reliably because the school board requires her to do so, arguing that students can still gain knowledge from this testimony.
Epistemological Problems of Testimony plato.stanford.edu 1 fact
claimThe author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry 'Epistemological Problems of Testimony' received feedback on the project from Jennifer Lackey and Sandy Goldberg.
Social Epistemology – Introduction to Philosophy - Rebus Press press.rebus.community 1 fact
referencePhilosophers define testimony as the act of telling others about the world, which can take the form of speech, text, or other communication methods, as noted by Jennifer Lackey in 2006.
Social Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu 1 fact
claimJessica Brown proposes an account of group justification that appeals to the testimony of group members but does not require the beliefs expressed in those testimonies to be justified for the group's belief to be justified, thereby avoiding objections raised by Jennifer Lackey against Alvin Goldman.