Transcript for:
Testimony and Epistemic Trust

hi everyone it is Ms white and here today I am going to talk to you about Elizabeth Fricker's reading from the VCA course for 2025 if you are after Miranda Fricker that will be in a different in a different episode oh I'm a fancy um TV show now no I mean a different video um so today I'm just going to be talking about Elizabeth Frria this will probably most of you will be studying this in relation to the first and third key questions the one on testimony and expertise and the one that's on trust so um before we begin I guess it's like expertise as well but before we begin um just the word epistemically means relating to knowledge so we are going to start here in advance i'm sorry about how the um the scanning has worked unfortunately with the way that my book is bound and my annotations are bound it was very hard to get my app to scan it and it was even worse when I tried to do it on a printer so you're going to have to forgive the curved over words sorry um so let's start with two II a principle concerning differential acceptance with these points about the need for shared meaning made we can proceed with the main positive idea we can formulate a general principle and this one is TAP one and I would be if I was you I'd be putting a circle or a box around it this is TAP one the testimony differential acceptance principle one for one properly to accept that P so remembering that P means some sort of proposition some sort of belief for one to properly accept that P on the basis of trust in another's testimony that P her word that P requires that she be epistemically well enough placed with respect to P so that were she to have or make a judgment to form a conscious belief regarding whether P her belief would almost certainly be knowledge and that she be better epistemically placed with respect to P than oneself and that one recognize these things to be so now I know that a lot of students when they see like the whole that P or that subject S um try and think replace P with some sort of proposition some sort of belief um for one to properly accept that 2 + 2= 4 on the basis of trust in another's testimony that 2 + 2 = 4 her word that 2 + 2 = 4 requires that she be epistemically well enough placed with respect to 2 + 2 = 4 so that were she to have or make a judgment to form a conscious belief regarding whether 2 + 2 equals 4 her belief would almost certainly be knowledge and that she'd be better epistemically placed with respect to 2 + 2 equals 4 than oneself and that one recognize these things to be so so I find that it helps if you actually like sub in some sort of belief or or do the proposition a proposition but TUP one is essentially the testifier they need to be epistemically well placed they need to be more of an expert no like more or less an expert in the particular thing that they're giving a belief about um or testifying about testifier epistemically well placaced enough to that the belief is almost certainly knowledge perhaps they're a mathematician perhaps they are someone who studied maths before they can affirm or it can almost be knowledge that 2 plus 2 equals 4 the testifier needs to be better epistemically placed than you um and you need to be able to recognize both of these things you need to be able to recognize that the testifier is perhaps better at mathematics than you and more uh more qualified to speak on mathematics than you and is so close to being um I guess is so well placed with knowledge in mathematics that 2 plus 2= 4 that you can accept their belief um obviously you don't need to be a mathematician to have 2 plus 2= 4 but someone who has studied maths you would need someone like that you wouldn't just like find you wouldn't believe a one-year-old child that 2 + 2 equals 4 if they told you because you're probably better epistemically placed than a um 1 or 2year-old child um and a 1 or 2year-old child probably hasn't been alive enough or long enough to be epistemically well placed in relation to 2 + 2als 4 so um you need to consider that and that's what Frera gets out straight away in this reading is here is tap one she gives you this principle she says tap one i I don't know if any other teachers it'll be interesting to know but do any other teachers go um tdap one or is everyone saying tap because I'm definitely saying tuck tap one specifies a condition necessary for epistemically proper trusting acceptance of another's testimony on some topic so this is all to do with expertise when can we trust someone else's expertise and when can we trust someone else's beliefs it is not sufficient because while the hero's cognizance of the testifier's strong epistemic position via v which means in relation to the topic makes it rational for her other things being equal confidently to expect the testifier's judgment about the matter in question to be correct to to deem her competent about the matter in question tap 1 does not speak to the question of the testifier's sincerity as I have argued elsewhere the overall trustworthiness of a speaker's testimony breaks down into these two quite separate components in this investigation I concentrate on the circumstances in which differential acceptance so deferring that is deferring to someone else's judgment differential acceptance of another's judgment as expressed in her sincere testimony is epistemically proper thus having noted the need for adequate warrant to believe the speaker sincere I put for further consideration of sincerity aside assuming in what follows that insincerity is not an issue in whether to trust the others testimony um so she's talking about she's just giving you this principle she says that for the sake of this article she's going to put aside the issue of um insincerity she's just going to assume that there are there is sincerity um because I mean there's a variety of reasons why people might be insincere when they're giving you a particular um a particular view or a particular belief um but for the sake of just getting to when can we defer to another person's belief or when can we um make a differential acceptance um she's just putting that to the side um we're just going to assume that for the most part in insincerity isn't an issue that's a whole different issue um for the sake of when can we accept someone's testimony we're going to put that aside so um let's keep going the matter of sincerity is one reason why TAP1 specifies only a necessary not a sufficient condition for epistemically proper deference to another's testimony so she's admitting here straight away she's like "Okay the reason why TAP one is um a is only a necessary not sufficient condition for relating to knowledge proper deference to another's testimony the only other reason I can think of why other things would not be equal regarding the hero's expectation of correctness of the testifier's express judgment is if she were also aware of significant contrary testimony contrary testimony would be epistemically significant if it either comes from another equally well-qualified expert or in some cases if it is from many mutually independent sources albeit not especially expert ones so um she's talking about when is contrary testimony or contrary testimony significant um it's when it's coming from someone who's equally wellqualified expert if they're giving you an opinion or giving you a belief if we have two people that are equally qualified in mathematics giving us 2 + 2 = 4 or one giving 2 plus 2= 4 and one giving 2 + 2= 5 how do we decide if they're equally um if they're equally qualified in mathematics a more refined condition incorporating these two factors which is normatively both necessary and sufficient for differential acceptance is TAP 2 so she's like okay this is for the most part TAP one is how we can defer to someone else's belief when we don't have enough knowledge on something or enough um backing for our beliefs but TAP 2 takes these two problems she's just discussed into account so um it takes into account that it's TAP 1 plus if the testifier is speaking sincerely plus we are not aware of any significant contrary or contrary testimony tap 2 one properly accepts that P on the basis of trust in another's testimony that P her word that P just if she speaks sincerely and she is epistemically well enough placed with respect to P so that were she to have or make a judgment to form a conscious belief regarding whether P her belief would almost certainly be knowledge and she's better epistemically placed with respect to P than oneself and one recognizes all these things to be so and one is not aware or of significant Contrary testimony regarding P so what does this mean it means that if you don't know the answer to something and you want to form a belief you're relying on an expert when can you defer to an e expert's belief so when can one can properly accept that 2 + 2 equals 4 on the basis of trust in another's testimony that 2 + 2 equals 4 or word that 2 + 2 equals 4 just if she speaks sincerely and she is epistemically well enough placed with respect to 2 + 2= 4 so that were she to have or make a judgment to form a conscious belief regarding whether 2 + 2= 4 her belief would almost certainly be knowledge and she's better epistemically placed with respect to 2 + 2= 4 than oneself and one recognizes these things to be so and one is not aware of significant contrary testimony regarding 2 + 2 equals 4 and that is when you can accept that belief that is when you can defer to another person's opinion or another person's belief um to form your own beliefs tap 2 specifies when it is proper to accept another's testimony that pee out right there will also be situations when neither party is in a position to make a knowledgeable judgment as to whether whether P so she's saying there's going to be times when there is some sort of belief that neither you or the person next to you are epistemically well enough placed to make a judgment of whether something like 2 + 2= 4 but one but one is better epistemically placed than the other in these cases it will be epistemically rational for the worstplace person to defer to the other's opinion so if me and Fred are sitting there and I'm saying 2 + 2 = 4 and Fred's saying no 2 + 2 equals 5 if I am I have done more study in maths um it makes sense or it's uh what does she say exactly uh she says epistemically rational is rational for Fred to accept or defer to my opinion because he hasn't studied mathematics and I have and I I'm more able to say that 2 plus 2 equals 4 so that's what she's saying that it's okay to defer to the person who is slightly better epistemically placed or has more knowledge on the topic um when neither of you know for sure um it does seem epistemically rational for that while falling short of taking her utterance as an expression of knowledge hence forming only a tentative belief regarding P so me and Fred can tentatively accept that 2 equals 2 + 2 equals 4 um we are open to the idea that it could be wrong but out of the two of us that's probably the best we can get to when we're trying to form a belief it's a tentative belief this is required when for instance an informed decision about how to act is urgently needed perhaps someone's going to shoot us if we don't say what 2 plus 2 equals um we would defer to me in that case because Fred hasn't studied maths um if it's urgently needed there may be some topics for which this situation is the rule that is where knowledge as opposed to more or less well-grounded speculation is very hard to come by it remains true that one should not accept outright another's testimony that P unless one reasonably believes her to be to be so placed as to almost certainly form knowledge and form knowledgeable belief regarding P hence TAP 2 is the correct general principle governing the outright acceptance of another's testimony um so we have got let's follow TAP 2 if we are going to when we are trying to accept another's testimony an explanatory comment is needed on the role of the complimentary internal and external components of epistemic propriety in TAP 1 and two i formulated TAP 1 and two incorporating both internal and external components because I'm concerned to describe what happens when things go right and thus how knowledge is spread by means of testimony externally things are going right when the testifier speaks from her expertise generated knowledge and is sincere but epistemic rationality has a key internal component it is not rational to accept unquestioningly the testimony of an expert who so far as one knows is no such thing so it's okay to um or it is not rational sorry is not okay to accept without questioning the testimony of an expert if you don't know that they're an expert um you don't have to accept it wouldn't be rational like if you don't know they're an expert you don't have to accept their testimony and though not allin epistemically proper it is subjectively rational and epistemically blame free to accept another's testimony when one falsely but justifiedly believes her to be an expert about the topic being deceived about this through no fault of one's own so it is it's not epistemically proper but it is subjectively rational and it's blamefree if when we're sitting there and Fred starts going 2 plus 2= 5 trust me I have a PhD in mathematics i'm like oh okay right Fred you are more you are better placed and if for whatever reason I genuinely believe that Fred is not lying to me i I couldn't be blamed for agreeing with Fred that 2 plus 2 equals 5 um I would be it would be epistemically blamefree and subjectively rational it wouldn't be epistemically proper it wouldn't be actual belief because I've been deceived um but it's been I've been deceived through this of no fault of one's own i am I am against purely externalist accounts of when acceptance of testimony is epistemically proper these failed to incorporate the requirement the subject maintain epistemic responsibility for her own beliefs in section three I spell out the implications and means of satisfying this requirement we may distinguish between a weak and strong form of deference to another's testimony a weak differential acceptance occurs when I form a belief that on the basis of trust in another's testimony that P when I myself have no firm pre-existing belief regarding P nor would I form form any firm belief regarding P were I to consider the question whether P using only my current epistemic resources apart from the current testimony to P and then there's a strong differential acceptance occurs when I let another's trusted testimony regarding P override my previous firm belief or disposition to form a firm belief regarding P so what's happened just here so she's gone through the example of like why it's okay that if you've been deceived it's you're blame free then she's moved on to a different discussion okay here is the difference between two different types of deference um to another's testimony so there's the weak and the strong the weak is that the belief was not fir firm um changes formed from testimony so when I I have form a belief on the basis of I trust someone else's testimony when I myself didn't already have a firm existing belief i um and I wouldn't form any firm belief were I not to consider the question using only my current epistemic resources so it's belief not I've written this in a very funny way but essentially it is when um when I I didn't have a firm belief before i didn't really have any reason to think about it and I have accepted another's testimony a strong differential acceptance is when another's trusted testimony overrides my own previous firm belief so I already had a firm belief about something then someone who is like better epistemically placed is more knowledgeable is a better expert comes along and changes my my belief the distinction between strong and weak differential acceptance may or may not turn out to be important first off it seems that there could be subject matters where strong differential acceptance is never epistemically appropriate although weak deference can be this this fact may illuminate the nature of that subject matter whether for weak or strong differential acceptance it seems that Ted 2 is the correct normative principle her sincerity not being in question and my being aware of no significant contrary testimony is it is epistemically proper that I defer to another's testimony informing my belief regarding P or in overriding my own previous belief regarding P just if I recognize that she is better epistemically placed than I am to determine whether P and it is epistemically proper that I accept her testimony outright just if I recognize this and also that she is so well placed to form almost certainly knowledge able belief regarding P we may introduce a thin and inclusive sense of expert capturing this core normative necessary condition for differential acceptance expressed in TAP 1 which is also normatively sufficient apart from the matters of sincerity and absence of significant contrary testimony so she's coming back she's coming back to TAP 2 um if the sincerity is not a question if there's no no significant contrary testimony it is epistemically proper that I defer to another's testimony if they are better epistemically placed so she's gone through okay here are some different terms about weak differential acceptance and strong differential acceptance and we just keep coming back to TAP 2 is correct and then lastly she gives a definition of expert before we go into the next section so the definition of expert she says is S so S means subject in philosophy um subject is an expert about P relative to H at T time just if at T S is epistemically well enough placed with respect to P so that were she to have or make a judgment to form a conscious belief regarding whether P her belief would almost certainly be knowledge and she is better epistemically placed than H to determine whether P okay so um let's read this by subbing in some names cuz I find that's always easier so Miss White is an expert about 2 + 2 = 4 relative to Fred at 2:00 just if at 2:00 Miss White is epistemically well enough placed with respect to 2 + 2= 4 so that were she to have or make a judgment to form a conscious belief regarding whether 2 + 2= 4 her belief would almost certainly be knowledge and she's better epistemically placed than Fred to determine whether 2 plus 2 equals 4 that is the definition of expert according to um Elizabeth Fricker so that brings us to the end of that first section it's going over the taps i recommend that you have these pretty well memorized some sort of form of them memorized so that you can talk about when Fria thinks that we should be deferring to another's testimony and your key questions that you will have tabbed are when can we trust another's testimony and um the testimony experience expertise that key question there's also a little bit on disagreement there as well um on the disagreement question in that section so let's go on to the second section which is for reliance on others word and epistemic self-governance we have seen as encapsulated in TAP 2 how it is rational to accept another's word on a topic and even allow her expressed judgment to override one's own prior opinion when one knows that she is strongly placed epistemically so it is rep it is rational to accept another's word on a topic if we know that they're an expert essentially or pretty well like they're knowledgeable and better placed than oneself regarding the matter in question for each of us her appreciation of her own circumscribed and feeble epistemic powers and small position on in the larger scheme of things together with her grasp on folk psychology including where applicable appreciation of others superior expertise and epistemically more advantageous position entails that deference to others opinions is rational in these circumstances lack of such appreciation of one's limited powers and others superior ones and accompanying refusal to bow to others judgment or even advice when they are clearly relatively clearly relatively expert is pigheaded irrationality not epistemic virtue or strength so when we don't accept someone else's view when they are clearly an expert um it's pigheaded is what she said here and the little bit she said about folk psychology um she's going to come back more to that but she's talking more about the fact that we we can generally tell when people are lying we can generally interpret what is going on around us we can interpret when someone is an expert and when someone isn't um and we can sort of have that folk psychology to help us figure that out um but she'll touch on that more does this mean then that there is after all no loss of epistemic autonomy incurred by the way in which in our modern condition we rely on others knowledge and its technological fruits for whole swades of fabric of knowledge and in our daily lives as sketched in my introduction it does not so she's like does this mean that there is no loss of epistemic autonomy that we don't have any um ability to form knowledge for ourselves like we always have to defer to others and she says no it does not mean that it is crucial for the maintenance of epistemic self-governance that our trust in the world of others is not given blindly and universally but discriminatingly we need to be discrim like discriminatory when we are trying to pick who we believe and how we form our own judgments so we still do have a knowledge self-governance able to self-govern ourselves in what we trust and what we believe by trusting only canaly and with good grounds we can do much to retain epistemic self-governance i shall return to this theme shortly but there is still an important loss of autonomy as I will now explain so there is some loss of autonomy we don't completely lose it we still get uh we still have some self-governance which is saying there is a little bit of a loss of autonomy and I'm going to explain why i mentioned our awareness of our own cognitive limitations our feeble powers we all we all can't know everything we can only see what is here and now and that only a limited and that only to a limited extent our memories even of this are often less and total are less than total and often corrupt and our inferential inferential powers are feeble so our memories aren't great like we we can't be knowledgeable all of the time we have powers we can only see what's happening right now in this very moment because even our memories are corrupt and they change and they're not perfect to rely on a superior being one who lacked our cognitive limitations and could do all the work herself in finding out about the universe could be epistemically autonomous in a way that no one of us with our limited research time and processing capacities is able to be so it is possible someone could be absolutely perfect um and be able to come up with all their own knowledge and all their own beliefs by themselves but unfortunately that's we're just not capable of that we need to rely on others to help form some of our beliefs or our good beliefs I should specify um so there is a loss of autonomy because we have an awareness of our own cognitive limitations our memories are corrupt we have these problems so we do lose some autonomy in the knowledge and the beliefs that we form because we do have to rely on others to to an extent and we can still choose who we rely on and who we believe um but there we don't have full autonomy and that might be something quite scary for you the fact that you don't have full autonomy in the beliefs that you form that is a bit scary um she she would not need so back to the superior being she would not need to take anything on trust from another's word because she would have the epistemic power to check up to find out for herself about everything she wanted to know without reliance on others we are no such beings and so we can extend our knowledge beyond a small base only through rational trust in the spoken or written word of others my trust in another's word is rational when I have good grounds to believe her competent about her topic and sincere and by this I mean I can know about all kinds of matters which I lack the time or talents to find out for myself but this knowledge from trust and testimony is knowledge at secondhand or third or fourth and as such my epistemic position via v what I know is in at least one respect inferior to when I know firsthand so this sort of loses some autonomy too the fact that my epistemic position in relation to what I know is in at least one respect inferior to when I know something firsthand so when I have to defer to someone else when I use an expert it's not as strong of a belief as if I were to know it for myself when I form belief that P through my trust in speaker's word given to me that P her testimony that P I take her to speak from knowledge that is this is a normative commitment of my accepting her utterance at face value as an expression of knowledge I come to know she does not speak from knowledge this is a normative defeater for my belief so when I find out that Fred has been lying um it defeats my belief that 2 plus 2 equals 5 additionally in my own view of knowledge as requiring adequate grounds I must be disposed upon reflection to form the belief that she speaks from knowledge this belief is an essential justifying ground for my belief in what I'm told and trustingly accept and so justifying ground for my belief oh sorry and so this is the one that's photocopied funny sorry guys and so must it self beck knowledge in short my reason for believing P true is because I believe or I am disposed to form belief upon reflection that my informant is telling me what she knows this being so I know only because someone else's knowledge has been passed on spread to me by the mechanism of telling of testimony oo there's one of our key words testimony um so we've got to I guess trust these people and if if we don't trust them it's not a belief that we form and it can go from more than just one person i can learn things or come to form belief second or third hand um and this comes from testimony knowledge can be passed on in this manner through many links in a chain of trusted testimony but the regress must stop eventually with someone who knows that P not from trusting testimony so if I know that 2 + 2 equals 4 from the test trusted testimony of my friend Mr joy the maths teacher and he knows that from his trust in his mathematics professors and they know that from their trust in blah blah blah blah blah um and it keeps going back and back and back then um Frick is pointing out the point well surely there's someone who just knows that P not from just test and testimony there is someone in that line in that chain of believing 2 + 2 = 4 that um there is someone who actually knows it not from testimony so we've got this following axiom t if h knows that p through being told that p and trusting the teller there is or was someone who knows that p in some other way not in virtue of having been told that p and trusting the teller so there must be someone who knows the thing not through testimony it is a consequence of T that if someone knows that P through trust in testimony there must be some other way in which P is or once was known hence T has the collery or sorry cor I can never say this word and this is going to be one that my students add to my list of words I can't pronounce um which means a proposition that follows from another for any proposition that proposition P that can be known there must be some way other than trust in testimony through which P can or once could be known so when we have beliefs there must be someone somewhere who knows it not through testimony why can not a chain of trusted testimony go in a circle falsifying T why can't it just be that perhaps I found out 2 + 2 = 4 from Mr joy and Mr joy found out 2+ 2= 4 from his math professor and his maths professor found out 2 plus 2= 4 from me and it goes around in this circle obviously would be a much larger circle than just three people but can it just come from a circle is it people telling each other the same thing um the regress must end with someone who knows that P in some other way because knowledge requires evidence or grounds when I know that P from someone's testimony my personal ground for believing belief that P the warrant and virtue of which I'm entitled to it is my knowledge that the informant knows that P but in in taking P to be known I'm rationally committed to an existential supposition that there is that there is to that there is that there is to say that some individual or group of persons between them possesses evidence or warrant for P which is not just that someone they trust has told them that P as T expresses knowledgeable belief based on trusted testimony implicitly refers back to the existence of a non-estimonial ground or warrant for what is testified to the ground or warrant in virtue of th of whose possession the original tellers spoke from knowledge hence there cannot be a state of affairs that is known through trust in testimony a chain of testimonally spread belief which went in a circle would lack any empirical grounding so there would be no empiricism remember that's like um the census so it has no scientific or sense-based evidence no empirical grounding and what is believed would not be any would not be true unless by luck uh consonant with this fact there is a sense of the evidence for P used in scientific style discourse when it is asked what is the evidence for P what is the evidence for 2 plus 2= 4 in which someone's testimony that pee is not evidence for pee at all for instance the question what is the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer is not answered by responding a lot of distinguished scientists have asserted that it does the question asked for an account of the real evidence the evidence on on which the expert's conclusion is based the well-groundedness of belief spread through testimony depends on the existence of such non-estimonial evidence for P that is on its possession perhaps distributedly upstream in the chain of informance so here's an example of a lung cancer when we we know that lung cancer uh can come from smoking and that comes from real evidence well-groundedness of a belief s and then that is spread um so something cannot be known only through testimony even though we can defer to other people's testimonies to form our beliefs there needs to be some actual grounding for that belief somewhere now we see the respect in which knowledge from trust in testimony is one in way is in one way inferior to owning to it being at second hand when I know that P is solely from trust in testimony I do not possess the evidence for P instead my knowledge is premised on the ex on the existential sub supposition that there is non-estimonial evidence for P although I myself do not possess it and I think this is like one of the most complicated ways to say that believing something or knowing something because your friend told you is not good as good as seeing it for yourself because if you see it for yourself you like you actually have the evidence whereas you're relying on someone else the secondhand way you don't actually have the evidence yourself whereas if it's firstand it's stronger because you do have that evidence you do have that evidence background i'm rationally committed to the proposition that a person or persons upstream in the chain of informance between them possess that evidence the grounds for believing P true where the proposition is an empirical one that is part of a theory i'm rationally committed to the proposition that these others have evaluated the evidence and drawn conclusions from it correctly so I can trust that the people above me in the chain of beliefs who have spread down this information um I believe that they've evaluated the evidence correctly that when they've done the test about lung cancer and smoking that they can be trusted to have drawn those conclusions properly often this ability is a large part of a special expertise the others possess via v me it is a weakness in my epistemic position regarding P that my alternate my ultimate ground for believing P is this derivative secondord one the proposition which I must be disposed to form belief in that there is empirical warrant though al though though unknown to me for believing pe where my informance expert status via v me is accidental it does not seem a worry my son tells me there is some milk left in the fridge and I believe him but if it mattered a lot I could easily check up for myself and if what he told me were false I would quickly find out i can get to the firsthand evidence if need be and I can evaluate it correctly but where my reliance on others depends on an expertise they possess relative to me which is more deep-seated and I lack the ability to check up for myself it seems worth it the existential supposition and dependence on others epistemic skills and truthfulness is more troubling so she gives the example of like asking her son if there's any milk left in the fridge and she can believe him because he's just been in the kitchen and looked in the fridge so he's more of an expert with respect to her um there's no reason to believe that he's lying um so but in that case I could go up and I could go check the fridge myself and I could get the belief I could get the knowledge firsthand but that's very different I guess to the smoking example is that I'm not a scientist i can't go and test and check that lung cancer actually is caused by smoking um it's or smoking I should say the other way around sorry that smoking causes lung cancer i can't do that and there's those are two different types of deferring epistemic dependence on others is troubling so the fact that I have to rely on others that smoking causes cancer is troubling firstly because it's risky that's one reason that epistemic dependence is troubling one because it's risky there are many motives for deceit and causes of honest error so there are even cases where people genuinely think something is true and they've just had a misunderstanding um and that's risky too so the fact that people can lie to me and they can be mistaken risky risky on the part of each of us and while each can try to trust only where there is a ground to expect sincerity and competence as elaborated below each link in a chain of testimonial transmission incurs its own risk of error and this is like the broken telephone game you play that with each person that it passes on to um it becomes less and less reliable to when you get to the end of the broken telephone the person has said something completely different to what the first person said so that um that transmission of beliefs becoming um very risky even that way another reason that being dependent on other people for knowledge or epistemic dependence is troubling second because along with the epistemic dependence on others comes a no less risky practical dependence on them in many areas for instance for maintenance of all the technological devices on which depends one depends on every day from electric lighting to computer to driving one's car and so forth i rely I believe the electric company that they know how to make the electricity in my house work um and I've never tried to actually get the belief of what happens with the electricity in my house i've not investigated that i don't have time probably um I maybe could but it's very hard it would be almost impossible for me to do i don't have that knowledge base in electricity or physics or um any of that to actually so I accept the electricity's com company's opinion but then that's risky too because when we rely on so many things like think about all the things you've interacted with today that actually have depended on an expert for something else the way that you've put your clothes on that this is going to be the most warmest way to wear your clothes or the when you turn on your television or you've turned on your phone or you've done anything that the when you've used a wheel um or used a car all of these different things you've relied on experts from and that can be troubling because all of these things you rely on even like getting electricity but getting water out of the tap your access to food is reliable on like experts and people who have beliefs and say that they know how to do these things that they say they can um that's risky too that's another reason why it's dependence on others epistmic dependence on others is risky because obviously if I just knew how to get water and get electricity and get clothes and all of that stuff and my phone and my TV and I could make them all myself um that would be a lot more trustworthy i wouldn't be putting myself at risk um but obviously we don't have time for that to make all of those things all the time so that's the second reason the third reason why dependence on others or epistemic dependence on others while it extends one's knowledge base so enorm enormously also lessens one's ability to ration rationally to police one's belief system for falsity so that's the third thing there are there it makes it although it extends our knowledge base enormously we're able to access more knowledge by our acceptance of others beliefs and others testimony but it makes it harder for us to police when someone is being insincere there are many things that a lay person believes which she would not know how to assess the scientific evidence which supports them even if presented with it this being so these beliefs of one will lack the characteristic sensitivity to defeating evidence should it come along which is usually taken to be a hallmark of belief which amounts to knowledge i've spelled out the bad news for epistemic self-governance entailed by our dependence on the word of others the good news is that as I already emphasized our trust in others need and should not be given blindly but cannally on where it is due so we need to be discriminatory in how we give our trust we don't just give our trust blindly although cognitively limited beings we are we must uh per p perforce certainly on others um if we want to enjoy the epistemic and technological riches of modern society I need to trust others if I want electricity um it would be great if I could generate the electricity myself and knew how to do that but I need to rely on people if I want those things we can take care only to trust those who we have good reason to hold worthy of our trust fortunately we all have some basic cognitive equipment to help us assess the sincerity and competence of others in many though by no means all circumstances this is because we are all experts though we're varying degrees of skill in one special topic namely that of folk psychology and this is what I was telling you she was going to come back later the reason why we can rely on other people's testimony is because we are all and maybe like biologically or um naturally experts to different degrees of skill in folk psychology we can tell when people are lying we can tell when people are being sincere we have that that um folk psychology where we can tell what people are saying and what they're doing um I a big problem I find with this though is like but what if it were possible to not be an expert in that what about people who do have social um I guess disabilities in the social sphere um that make it very difficult for them to tell those things like is like how how do those people then form good beliefs um what do we do then anyway back to this that we're all experts in for ecology thus where we do not have access to or cannot evaluate the evidence for propositions in some domain ourselves we move one level up and instead evaluate the experts so we we can we can evaluate the experts we might not be able to evaluate the evidence or the beliefs they're giving forward but we can evaluate them our human sources of knowledge about this domain but in assessing an informance trustworthiness is not always easy and sometimes there are not sufficient epistemic resources available to the lay person to enable a firmly based evaluation to be made at all the risks involved in trusting others are considerable especially where there are motivations for deception at work as I've been arguing there is often good empirical evidence empirical grounds for trusting others and where there is where so it is consistent with our maintenance of our epistemic self-governance a responsibility for our own beliefs that we believe on trust in the word of others relying on their report for truth of something where we do not possess for ourselves the evidence and may not even be capable of appreciating significance moreover we saw in section two where I know another to be epistemically expert relative to me on a topic it is not just rationally permissible but rationally mandatory for me to accept her judgment in preference to my own just so long as I have good ground to trust her sincerity where there is no no good ground to believe and inform and trustworthy however epistemic self-governance entails that we should not accept reports of others caution and can canoness should govern our response to others testimony unless we exercise it we fail to maintain responsibility for our own beliefs the end and that is the end of Elizabeth Frrier um I think that a lot of it is quite big vocab but hopefully there has been some helpful um explanations there for you and that this video was helpful um thank you for watching