ACTA ADMINISTRATIVA

Alvin Goldman’s truth-oriented social epistemology includes one of the most comprehensive frameworks for testimony. Beginning with §1.4, I examined how reliabilism enables Goldman to avoid many of the justificatory issues that limit the testimony literature. Epistemics, in both its individual and social branches, is instead directed towards prescribing ways to improve the efficiency of knowledge acquisition.

In §1.5, I discussed the epistemics project as a whole and some of its major issues. The individual branch of epistemics is the most important branch, since all matters concerning knowledge ultimately terminate in an individual’s belief-forming processes. Even though social epistemics is merely an extension of individual epistemics, the third major issue that I

discussed—namely, accounting for the nature of discoveries—indicates the need for social epistemics. Along these lines, the concept of product epistemology explains how individuals can collaborate on problems such as those found in science.

Language is, in effect, the most basic kind of product epistemology. More than anything, social epistemology is a distinct domain of enquiry because the medium of language makes people particularly influential on each other’s stock of beliefs. It is upon this broad framework that Goldman approaches the topic of testimony, rooting testimony in the use of language for transmitting observational reports.

As discussed in §1.6.1, Goldman adopts most of the basic tenets of the testimony

literature. His most noteworthy contribution consists in his proposal to universally apply Bayes’ Theorem to testimonial practices. Bayesian inference is shown to likely increase the amount of true beliefs within a community despite not necessarily providing epistemic justification for those beliefs. The increase in veritistic value (i.e., “V-value”) can be verified by a third-person authority who monitors beliefs within the community.

The specific type of regulatory control that I focused on in §1.6.2 was epistemic paternalism. I used this specific type of third-person intervention to highlight the essentially passive nature of agency in Goldman’s epistemics and the testimony literature more generally. Whether first-personal or third-personal, epistemic agency consists in filtering informational inputs in order to stockpile true beliefs. Epistemic agency is essentially passive because it is limited to how an agent receives information. From a strictly epistemic viewpoint, Goldman sees a cleavage between a source of information (whether a person or other external force) and the informational receiver. This cleavage manifested itself in Goldman’s testimony account in the claim that monological argumentation is the basic and isolable form of testimony reporting.

The cleavage between testimonial reporter and receiver creates a motivation problem. An individual must make an effort to report information to another person, and it is not always clear why individuals expend such effort to share information. Goldman recognizes and briefly canvasses possible solutions to the motivation problem in the 1999 chapter on testimony. The general solution that Goldman seeks is an evolutionary selective pressure that favors

communication, which is most plausible when thought of in terms of examples such as animals warning each other of threats. Over the long-term, individuals would mutually benefit from such communication. But Goldman recognizes that such an explanation is not entirely satisfactory,

since many animals communicate when there is no clear instrumental benefit and even when there is a negative cost—the example that Goldman notes is of chickens who share when they find a food source. While instrumental benefits are obviously a motivating factor in epistemic interaction, I think the attempt to make it the fundamental motivating factor results from the mistaken picture of there being a cleavage between reporter and receiver.27

The very idea of a fundamental motivation to communicate is only plausible given the larger picture of a default cleavage between testimonial reporter and receiver. Seeking a

fundamental motivation to be social is an example of what Martin Kusch (2002b)—with regard to the testimony literature as a whole—diagnoses as the dilution of social life. Like other

contributors to the testimony literature, Goldman considers the details of actual interaction to be of only secondary/derivative importance to testimony.

The details of social interaction are epistemically significant only insofar as they relate to the transmission of beliefs. Interaction is strictly an instrumental means for gaining information more efficiently than would be required for first-hand experience. So even though Goldman rightfully deprioritizes the question of justification—allowing him to focus on ways to more efficiently transmit true beliefs—he still myopically focuses on message acceptance. The question of whether to accept a belief still crowds out the interactive dynamics between two agents. Goldman’s “aim realism” offers another, broader perspective on Goldman’s distinctive form of social myopia.

Goldman’s truth-oriented social epistemology is an expression of his commitment to aim realism. As presented in Goldman (1986), aim realism rests on a fitting correspondence theory of

27 _{Another troubling feature of Goldman’s discussion is the implicit equivocation of evolution with natural} selection. The adaptationist focus on the survival of the fittest brings with it the presumption that social relationships should be explained strictly in terms of instrumental benefits. In Chs. 3 – 5, using the

transformation view, I argue that naturalism does not warrant such a reduction of social relations. Regarding adaptationism, see Gould and Lewontin (1979).

truth.28 Language, as formulated by epistemic agents, provides the conditions of truth but physical reality still determines whether language fits.29 Thus, an agent may focus solely on reformulating terminology (e.g., attempting to solve a theoretical puzzle), but what gives

ultimate significance to such exercises is the possibility of providing a better fit to reality. Truth- oriented social epistemology refers to the same dynamic but explicitly at the level of a

community. Analogous to esoteric theoretical puzzles with no direct connection to factual truths, certain measures may be instituted in a community even though they may seem to be unrelated or even a hindrance to truth. Epistemic paternalism is a good example in this respect because there is a clear sense in which truth appears to be hindered. But Goldman thinks that the ultimate effects are veritistically positive: a community will ultimately possess a greater amount of true beliefs. Hence, Goldman’s social epistemology is truth-oriented in the sense that it concerns itself with issues that do not immediately relate to truths but which promote the acquisition of truths in the long-term; it orients a community to acquiring truths.

By concerning itself with the means of acquiring truths, truth-oriented social epistemology gives a more comprehensive treatment of testimony. But, as I have argued, Goldman’s treatment is still myopic due to neglecting the interactive dynamics between individuals. In §1.5, this issue appears in the form of delineating between the practical and intellectual dimensions of problem solving, while in §1.6.2, I traced the problem back to the essentially passive understanding of epistemic agency. The only means that Goldman concerns himself with—whether from a first- or third-person perspective—is how to filter informational inputs. Both Turner’s weak empathy model and enactivism’s participatory sense-making offer

28 _{This conception of truth is the metaphysical underpinning of reliabilism, explaining why it is not merely a} heuristic for traditional justification.

29 _{Martin Kusch (2002a) argues that Goldman’s fitting conception of truth correspondence is either vacuous or} contradictory.

active conceptions of epistemic agency. But before examining these fundamentally different approaches to epistemic interaction in the subsequent chapters, I first want to discuss Martin Kusch’s internal critique of the testimony literature. Kusch’s critique serves as a helpful transition because it anticipates the more pragmatically oriented accounts, yet still retains the testimony literature’s focus on language as the primary medium of social interaction.