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Gaining Scientific Knowledge from Others

  • Kevin McCain
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Part of the Springer Undergraduate Texts in Philosophy book series (SUTP)

Abstract

This chapter explores how we gain knowledge from other people. In particular two of the primary ways that we come to have social evidence are explored. The first is the most prevalent form of social evidence: testimony. This chapter examines some of the best explanations of how it is that we come to have knowledge via the testimony of others. The second way that we come to have social evidence is by learning of disagreements. This chapter explores the epistemic significance of disagreement as it occurs in science. In particular it discusses how we should respond when we discover that someone disagrees with us about a scientific claim. When we discover that equally informed experts in an area of science disagree we should refrain from believing one side or the other is correct until we have further deciding evidence. When novices discover that experts disagree with them concerning a scientific claim, the novices should defer to the experts.

Keywords

Local Reductionism Doxastic Attitude Positive Reason Testimonial Knowledge Average Summer Temperature 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kevin McCain
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of PhilosophyUniversity of Alabama at BirminghamBirminghamUSA

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