Abstract
Most evidentialists think that experiences, in some way or other, yield evidence for a person. Critics of evidentialist theories often make objections that depend on substantive assumptions about how experiences yield evidence for a person. A common set of objections turns on the assumption that a sensory experience all by itself is evidence for a person. For instance, it has been assumed that a visual experience of blood beside an unmoving naked body in a park is itself evidence that a crime has been committed. But, this assumption is false, as I will argue. Until I have additional experiences that give me reason to link the look of blood beside an unmoving body to a crime having been committed, my visual experience does not indicate to me that a crime has been committed. This point has implications across many discussions in epistemology, from theoretical discussions about whether and the extent to which there is any immediate prima facie justification given in experience, to debates about how testimony yields epistemically rational belief. Careful reflection on my argument both gives us reason to reject a number of epistemic theories and principles in the literature and motivates a powerful evidentialist case for an intimate relation between epistemic rationality and epistemic justification.
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Notes
- 1.
This view manifests “anti-reductionism” in the epistemology of testimony literature.
- 2.
- 3.
‘RE’ could also abbreviate “Richard-Earl” evidentialism or “Realistic Evidentialism”.
- 4.
- 5.
In Meno (98a) Plato has Socrates say that knowledge is true belief plus an account of the reason why.
- 6.
Contemporary non-evidentialist theories of epistemic justification (e.g., process reliabilism and proper functionalism) do not require features of a person’s situation that could be used by someone as a consideration counting in favor of holding the belief; for example, one’s belief could be caused by a reliable process without one’s thereby having the slightest inkling, which could be used as a consideration in favor of belief, that the belief is caused by a reliable process.
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This allows for various kinds of reasons for belief: epistemic, prudential, moral, etc.
- 8.
Evidentialists sometimes use ‘epistemic reason’ in roughly the same way I here use ‘good epistemic reason’. One advantage of my distinction is that my use of ‘epistemic reason’ allows us to do categorical justice to responsibilist/subjectivist theories of justification such as in Foley (1993).
- 9.
My point isn’t that evidentialism requires one to have a good epistemic reason (as indicated above) in order to have epistemic justification. Indeed, it’s plausible that young children have epistemic justification for believing propositions without thereby having considerations of any kind that they take in favor of p. The point is that what all evidentialists think is required for epistemic justification (i.e., an indication of truth to a person) just is what could serve as a good epistemic reason for belief.
- 10.
This seems right whether or not visual experiences have propositional content. Suppose first that visual experiences do not have propositional content. If Sophie were to lack the highlighted background information (or something like it), then she would have nothing linking her current (non-propositional) visual experience to the nearby presence of a tree; thus, she would have nothing that could serve as a good epistemic reason to believe TREE. Now suppose that visual experiences do have propositional content. If Sophie were to lack the highlighted background information (or something like it), then the propositional content of her visual experience would not be ‘that is a tree’ (perhaps it would be ‘that is a green and brown thing’). Now, someone might object that the content of her visual experience is not determined by the concepts she possesses; so, one might argue, the content of her visual experience could be ‘that’s a tree’ even though she lacks the concept of tree. But, even if such a view is correct, it won’t help to show that Sophie’s visual experience by itself gives her what could serve as a good epistemic reason for believing TREE. Here’s why: although on the proposed objection Sophie’s visual experience has the content ‘that’s a tree’, she is obviously not in a position to cognize this content; that is, even if her visual experience represents a tree, it doesn’t represent a tree to her; thus, there is nothing that could serve anyone in her epistemic situation as a good epistemic reason for believing TREE.
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For ease of presentation in discussing testimonial cases I’ll refer to the ‘speaker’ and the ‘hearer’, but readers should note that testimony does not require literal speaking or literal hearing.
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- 13.
In philosophical debates, the distinction is marked in various ways and applied to various epistemic concepts. One could debate whether some positive epistemic status a hearer has via testimony is conferred apriori (anti-reductionism) or aposteriori (reductionism); or whether some principle of testimony is a fundamental epistemic principle (anti-reductionism) or derivative from a more fundamental epistemic principle (reductionism).
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- 15.
I thank Kevin McCain for several excellent suggestions for improving this essay. Time for research and writing were provided by a sabbatical granted by California Polytechnic State University.
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Long, T.R. (2018). From Experience to Evidence: Sensory and Testimonial. In: McCain, K. (eds) Believing in Accordance with the Evidence. Synthese Library, vol 398. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95993-1_2
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