Lowe, Katie;
(2024)
Evidential and Testimonial Reasons for Belief: An Analysis of Moran’s View on the Epistemological Value of Testimony.
Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
A large proportion of our knowledge about the world comes from the testimony of other people. Our capacity to investigate things for ourselves is limited, so we depend heavily on the word of others. As such, we ought to know what justifies the beliefs formed by this means. What is it about this mechanism of forming beliefs that means we can trust its deliverances? This question is made more pressing by the fact that as a mechanism for forming beliefs, testimony is frequently unreliable. We know that people lie, mislead, and can be mistaken. Moran thinks it is a mistake to answer this question without attending to the nature of testimonial acts as speech acts. He argues that there are certain asymmetries between the way we acquire reasons to believe from the speech acts of other people and the traditional epistemological standpoint of the individual observer and interpreter of evidence. These asymmetries are interconnected and numerous throughout the Exchange of Words. In my thesis I will examine just one along with Moran’s accompanying argument that, because of this asymmetry, accounts of testimony that attempt to assimilate its epistemological value to that of evidence will fail. The aim of my thesis is largely clarificatory; to elucidate Moran’s argumentation and clear up what I think Moran had in mind in places where it is unclear. I will look at cases where our epistemological relationship to evidence undergoes varying levels of mediation and see if Moran’s asymmetry is still accurate. I will clarify what I think Moran’s treatment of these cases, and his response to challenges, would be. Finally, I investigate if the asymmetry I have examined is sufficient for Moran’s conclusion that the reason for belief offered by testimony is indeed distinct from that provided by evidence.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil.Stud |
| Title: | Evidential and Testimonial Reasons for Belief: An Analysis of Moran’s View on the Epistemological Value of Testimony |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196811 |
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