concept

Local Reductionism

Also known as: Local Reductionists

Facts (16)

Sources

Epistemological Problems of Testimony plato.stanford.edu Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Apr 1, 2021 16 facts

claimLocal Reductionism avoids the problems of Global Reductionism by evaluating the reliability of individual pieces of testimony on a case-by-case basis rather than treating testimony as a unified category.

claimOpponents of Local Reductionism argue that individuals can be justified in believing a speaker's testimony even without non-testimonial reasons to support the inference from the speaker's statement to the truth of the statement.

claimThe objection regarding the difficulty of testimonial justification targets Reductionist views in general, not just Local Reductionism.

claimLocal Reductionism fails to account for the intuition that a traveler is justified in accepting directions from a stranger in a new country, despite lacking specific non-testimonial reasons to trust that stranger.

claimLocal Reductionism posits that a hearer is justified in accepting a speaker's testimony only if the hearer possesses non-testimonial reasons to believe the speaker is reliable on that specific occasion, rather than relying on a general belief in the reliability of testimony.

claimThe objection that Local Reductionism precludes children from learning from parental testimony also applies to Global Reductionism.

perspectiveKenyon (2013) defends Local Reductionism by arguing that hearers can use contextual information to support their inference about a speaker's reliability, even when they know little about the speaker.

claimReductionists in social epistemology are divided into two camps: Global Reductionists and Local Reductionists, based on their disagreement over how the thesis of Positive Reasons should be understood.

procedureTo justify accepting a specific piece of testimony under Local Reductionism, a hearer must possess non-testimonial evidence supporting two premises: (1) the speaker made the specific statement, and (2) the speaker is generally truthful in that specific context and domain.

claimLocal Reductionists define testimonial justification as a combination of perceptual, memorial, and inferential justification, where a listener perceives an utterance and infers its truth based on the specific occasion.

claimLocal Reductionism precludes young children from being able to learn from the testimony of their parents.

claimCritics argue that Local Reductionism makes testimonial justification difficult to achieve because social psychology research suggests humans are poor at detecting false or unreliable testimony.

claimOpponents of Local Reductionism argue that the theory problematically excludes young children from justifiably accepting parental testimony because children lack the worldly experience required to establish the reliability of their parents.

claimLocal Reductionism implies that humans have less testimonial justification than previously assumed, because it requires hearers to be skilled at monitoring for signs of falsehood and unreliability, a skill humans lack.

claimLocal Reductionism avoids the vicious circles and regresses associated with Global Reductionism because it does not require third-party testimony to establish the reliability of a speaker.

claimLocal Reductionists do not require a listener to have positive reasons for the general reliability of testimony to be justified in accepting a specific speaker's statement.