Reasons Beyond Reach
We tend to base our beliefs on reasons. Despite disagreement about the nature of the basing relation, a core tenet of every account is a possession condition: I believe p for a reason only if I possess that reason, where I possess a reason when the reason is “in my mind” in some sense. I reject the possession condition and argue that it is possible to believe for reasons you do not possess. First, I argue that the best rationales for the possession condition are misguided. Then I look at a case of forgotten evidence and argue that the best diagnosis of the case is that the agent believes on the basis of her original evidence, which she has forgotten (and so does not possess).
Believing for Another's Reason
I argue that when we can believe for other people’s reasons when we trust their testimony. While sometimes we treat testimony skeptically and make calculated inferences on the basis of someone’s speaking, we very often approach testimony with a more trusting stance. We often “take someone’s word for it.” When this happens, they become partly answerable for our beliefs. Since being answerable for our beliefs is a matter of having special authority to rationally explain why we have these beliefs, the testifier’s reasons for believing become part of the rational explanation of our belief. Believing someone, I argue, is a matter of believing on the basis of their reasons as well as your own. This is a novel view in the testimony literature.
Inheritance without Conflict
My view in “Believing for Another’s Reasons” appears to face a problem. Suppose Alice and Bob both have evidence that exactly one person committed a crime. Alice has evidence that it was Wilson, and Bob has evidence that it was Ximena. Now, they each tell you that it was exactly one person. According to similar accounts of testimony, I now have evidence that it was more than one person. But I should have evidence that exactly one person committed the crime—after all, two people told me so. I argue that my own view of testimony does not face this problem. When we believe someone, we close inquiry on a question. Thus, you can only believe one testifier at a time with respect to a particular question.
A Harmony of Minds: Adam Smith's epistemology of testimony
What is valuable about being believed? Adam Smith describes the desire of being believed as “one of the strongest of all our natural desires” and identifies it with the desire for “leading and directing” other people (TMS VII.iv.25). Testifying, then, is a crucial way of exercising some kind of authority. Smith develops an alternative to contemporary views, where believing someone means letting them “do all the work” by deferring to them. When I believe you, in Smith's sense, I am not just deferring to you. I am seeing how your beliefs are intelligible by your own lights and by mine. This is why being believed is a way of exercising authority. Even if you don’t change my mind, I am led, for a time, to see things as you see them.