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Testimony and the Infant/Child Objection

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Abstract

One of the central problems afflicting reductionism in the epistemology of testimony is the apparent fact that infants and small children are not cognitively capable of having the inductively based positive reasons required by this view. Since non-reductionism does not impose a requirement of this sort, it is thought to avoid this problem and is therefore taken to have a significant advantage over reductionism. In this paper, however, I argue that if this objection undermines reductionism, then a variant of it similarly undermines non-reductionism. Thus, considerations about the cognitive capacities of infants and small children do not effectively discriminate between these two competing theories of testimonial justification.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, 60115, USA

    Jennifer Lackey

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  1. Jennifer Lackey
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Correspondence to Jennifer Lackey.

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Lackey, J. Testimony and the Infant/Child Objection. Philos Stud 126, 163–190 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-004-7798-x

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