entity

Christopher Green

Also known as: Christopher Graney

Facts (8)

Sources

Epistemology of Testimony | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 8 facts

claimChristopher Green argues that if memory is treated as the interpretation of a message from an earlier time slice of oneself, then memorially-based beliefs are transformed into testimonially-based beliefs, and this transformation should not create or preserve epistemic status or affect the structure of its explanation.

claimChristopher Green (2006) argues that humans possess the freedom to reject perceptually-based beliefs, noting that individuals can easily entertain skeptical scenarios such as being a brain in a vat.

claimChristopher Green argues that testimony and memory are on an epistemic par.

claimGreen suggests that transforming perceptually-based beliefs into testimonially-based beliefs involves anthropomorphizing sense faculties by imagining a world where sense faculties are operated by individuals who present messages about the environment, resulting in the same structure of explanation for epistemic status.

procedureChristopher Green proposes transforming testimonially-based beliefs into memorially-based beliefs by applying the legal fiction of agency, 'qui facit per alium, facit per se' ('he who acts through another, acts himself'), treating the testifier as the believer's epistemic agent.

claimChristopher Green argues that agency is potentially at stake in cases of perception, such as the possibility that someone has substituted a fake object for a real one.

claimGreen argues that the epistemic parity of testimony, memory, and perception follows from the epistemic innocence of transformations that turn instances of testimonially-based beliefs into instances of beliefs based on the other two sources, preserving the structure of the explanation of epistemic status.

claimChristopher Green argues that the fact that a faculty for obtaining information is operated by a person should not fundamentally change how that source produces justified beliefs and knowledge.