Abstract
Children learn and come to know things about the world at a very young age through the testimony of their caregivers. The challenge comes in explaining how children acquire such knowledge. Since children indiscriminately receive testimony, their testimony-based beliefs seem unreliable, and, consequently, should fail to qualify as knowledge. In this paper I discuss some attempted explanations by Sandy Goldberg and John Greco and argue that they fail. I go on to suggest that what generates the problem is a hidden assumption that the standards for testimonial knowledge are invariant between children and cognitively mature adults. I propose that in order to adequately explain how children acquire testimonial knowledge we should reject this hidden assumption. I then argue that understanding knowledge in terms of intellectual skills gives us a plausible framework to do so.
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Notes
Reid (1983): p. 281.
Greco (2008): p. 335.
Lackey (2008). She argues that although testimonial knowledge does not require that testifier knows that which she testifies, it does require that the speaker be reliable at communicating the truth. Someone disposed to lying or asserting what is unjustified or false will not transmit testimonial knowledge. Whether or not a speaker needs to be a reliable believer, it seems clear that she needs to be a reliable testifier. Not surprisingly, Lackey goes on to argue that memory can also generate knowledge.
Lackey (2008): p. 66. I think it is important that Bill has some, but very little reason to doubt Jill’s testimony. Lackey’s original case claims that Bill has no reason to doubt Jill. The reason for this change is that I think Bill can still come to know things despite being evidentially insensitive. For example, if Jill tells Bill that she had toast for breakfast, or that she sleeps on a queen sized bed, and if Bill has absolutely no reason to doubt this testimony, then I take it that Bill does come to know these facts about Jill. The cases I focus on are such that Bill has some reason, though normally not overriding reason to doubt Jill. In the case above I take it as somewhat surprising that Jill saw a whale, though under normal circumstances, and with normal recipients of testimony, this would not be enough to justify doubting the proffered testimony. This slight modification to Lackey’s case should not affect the main argument of this paper. Thanks to Alex Jackson for pushing me to acknowledge the possibility of Bill acquiring knowledge despite being evidentially insensitive.
Ibid.: p. 67.
Goldberg (2008): p. 8.
Goldberg (2008) cites a large number of such studies.
Greco (2008): pp. 336–7.
Goldberg (2008): p. 17.
Ibid.: p. 17.
Ibid.: p. 18.
Ibid.: p. 19.
This objection is also raised by Greco (2008).
Greco (2000): p. 218.
Ibid.: p. 216.
Greco (2008): p. 346.
In the case provided no specific proposition was given. I’ve here made the innocuous supposition that it was a proposition about some current event.
The proposed solution to this problem can be adopted by virtue reliabilist and virtue responsibilists alike. However, it seems to me important that framework of intellectual skills is adopted since it provides the motivation for having different standards for a credited performance.
Wallace (1978): p. 48.
Annas (1993): p. 85 (emphasis added).
Annas (1993): p. 97 (emphasis added).
Aristotle (1999): NE 1103a32–1103b3.
C.f. Annas (1995).
Annas (1993): p. 67 (emphasis added).
Zagzebski (1996): p. 310–11.
Thanks to Ernie Sosa for pressing me to clarify this point.
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When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NASB)
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Orozco, J. I Can Trust You Now … But Not Later: An Explanation of Testimonial Knowledge in Children. Acta Anal 25, 195–214 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-009-0085-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-009-0085-x