Testimonial Knowledge in Early Childhood, Revisited1

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (1):1-36 (2008)
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Abstract

Many epistemologists agree that even very young children sometimes acquire knowledge through testimony. In this paper I address two challenges facing this view. The first (building on a point made in Lackey (2005)) is the defeater challenge, which is to square the hypothesis that very young children acquire testimonial knowledge with the fact that children (whose cognitive immaturity prevents them from having or appreciating reasons) cannot be said to satisfy the No‐Defeaters condition on knowledge. The second is the extension challenge, which is to give a motivated, extensionally‐adequate account of the conditions on testimonial knowledge in early childhood. Neither challenge can be met merely by endorsing externalism about knowledge; but we can meet both by reconceiving the process that eventuates in the child’s consumption of testimony. My central thesis is that this process should be seen as implicating features of the child’s social environment. The result is a novel anti‐individualistic externalism about knowledge.

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Sanford Goldberg
Northwestern University

Citations of this work

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Philosophical expertise beyond intuitions.Anna Drożdżowicz - 2018 - Philosophical Psychology 31 (2):253-277.
The reality of the intuitive.Elijah Chudnoff - 2017 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (4):371-385.

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The extended mind.Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers - 1998 - Analysis 58 (1):7-19.
Warrant and proper function.Alvin Plantinga - 1993 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Individualism and the mental.Tyler Burge - 1979 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1):73-122.
Testimony: a philosophical study.C. A. J. Coady - 1992 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Content preservation.Tyler Burge - 1993 - Philosophical Review 102 (4):457-488.

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