New APPS

By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

I am currently supervising a MA thesis on interpersonal justification (by Sebastiano Lommi), and this is providing me with the opportunity to connect the dots between a number of topics and questions I’ve been interested in for years. In particular questions pertaining the epistemic value of deliberation, metaphors for argumentation, and the Enlightenment ideal of epistemic autonomy are all coming together. In this post I argue that the process whereby knowledge is shared through argumentation and exchange of reasons preserves the autonomy of the knowing subject to a greater extent than through testimony alone. Ultimately, the goal is to hit the sweet spot between preserving the autonomy of the knower while avoiding an overly individualistic picture of knowledge, i.e. one where the social dimension of knowledge is not sufficiently recognized.

The work of developmental psychologist Paul L. Harris (e.g. his book Trusting what you’re told) has been an important influence for my thinking on these matters. It is thanks to him that I got to see these issues through the lenses of Enlightenment ideals — the exhortation to think for yourself — which were a reaction to the then-prevailing model of (excessive) deference towards authority and testimony. Harris argues that the emphasis on the autonomy of the knowing subject thus conceived (as found in e.g. Kant, Rousseau, and centuries later in Piaget) swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, leading to a mistaken conception of knowledge and learning as essentially individual processes, disregarding how much we in fact learn from others.

In recent decades, the importance of taking into account the social aspects of knowledge became increasingly acknowledged in epistemology, leading to the emergence of the subfield of social epistemology. Arguably, the main focus of social epistemology until now has been on testimony, though there has also been some work on interpersonal justification, understood as "argument addressed to those who disagree with us, or to ourselves when we are of two minds" (Ralws) (see here for Goldman’s classic ‘Argumentation and interpersonal justification’, where he argues (mistakenly, in my opinion) that personal justification remains the primitive notion). While these may not be the two only processes whereby a person shares knowledge with others, for present purposes I take these to be paradigmatic cases.

There are a number of important differences between testimony and interpersonal justification, but here I will focus on the concept of epistemic autonomy, namely the idea that individuals are ultimately solely responsible for the justification of their beliefs (‘think for yourself!’). A recent discussion of this concept in connection with testimony can be found in B. McMyler’s book Testimony, Trust, and Authority (OUP, 2011) (indeed, this book has been tremendously helpful for my student Sebastiano to frame his thoughts). If I read him right, McMyler argues that testimony does not require a hearer to think for herself and thus to come to her own conclusions regarding the content just communicated. In other words, testimony does not transfer independent reasons for believing p; the testimony itself it the reason for believing (or not). (Of course, there are a number of different accounts of the epistemology of testimony – see here the SEP entry on testimony by the late Jonathan Adler.) This means that testimony is somewhat at odds with the ideal of epistemic autonomy.

In contrast, with interpersonal justification, interlocutors exchange reasons for their beliefs. Similarly, the process can be described as the speaker offering reasons as epistemic assets to the hearer, but the hearer is then solely responsible for drawing her own conclusions, which means that her epistemic autonomy is preserved: she makes someone’s reasons her own (or not). This ties nicely with the conception of argumentation as ‘gift-exchange’ that I sketched in this blog post, though the metaphor has limitations; one is not entirely free not to accept a gift, since this is usually considered to be very rude, whereas one should be free to accept or not someone else’s reasons for believing p. But the metaphor has the advantage of emphasizing symmetry between interlocutors, something that is missing in other models such as the therapeutic model or the counseling model of argumentation. (Caveat: naturally, in real-life situations there are often power differentials between interlocutors which disrupt symmetry. A thoroughly developed account of interpersonal justification must include non-ideal situations as well.) Interpersonal justification thus conceived preserves the epistemic autonomy of the knower while also making room for knowers to acquire knowledge from others — a key component of social conceptions of knowledge, which is put under pressure if autonomy alone takes the upper hand.

The issue of argumentation and interpersonal justification has important political implications; it is no happenstance that a number of political theorists, including Rawls, Habermas, E. Anderson, among others, have been particularly interested in the topic. (In Sebastiano’s thesis, the second-personal standpoint of S. Darwall also occupies a prominent position.) Internalist conceptions of justification have been accused of over-intellectualizing the possession of knowledge by requiring that the knower should always have epistemic access to the reasons for her beliefs (and thus of having anti-democratic implications). But thoroughly externalist conceptions of justification do not seem to provide sufficient resources for political deliberation, and more generally, for an account of interpersonal justification. Indeed, if I do not have epistemic access to my reasons for believing p, then I cannot transfer them (and thereby the belief in p) to you by means of argumentation. And naturally, autonomy is a crucial component in democratic political deliberation, so here again a conception of interpersonal justification that pays close attention to (epistemic) autonomy is a valuable asset.

(I intend to write a large research grant proposal on these topics after the summer, so whatever thoughts or suggestions people may have are very welcome!)