Elizabeth Fricker’s Theory of Testimony Testimonial knowledge can be gained from a speech act between a hearer and speaker. Two main theories exist in the domain of testimonial knowledge: Reductionism and Non-Reductionism. Reductionism states that testimonial knowledge can simply be reduced down to other more basic sources of knowledge, for example perception and memory. Testimony is not a separate or distinct source of knowledge then. There is a focus only on the hearer since one may receive warrant to believe p on the basis of one’s positive reasons for that testimony. Positive reasons classify as any reasons we have that support the acceptance of p. These positive reasons will be elaborated throughout the paper. Non-Reductionists on the other hand, claim testimony is a special source of knowledge and we must therefore treat it in a separate way from other knowledge. This theory focusses only on the speaker and the emphasis is on a ‘no-defeating’ clause which identifies the need for an absence of any other belief that would defeat (contradict or disprove) p. As long as no defeating claim exists and the speaker is a reliable testifier, one may gain knowledge of p. Note that on this account there is no need for positive reasons. On the Non-Reductionist account then, we get the following Presumptive Right (PR) thesis: ‘On any occasion of testimony, the hearer has the epistemic right to assume, without evidence, that the speaker is trustworthy, i.e. that what she says will be true, unless there are special circumstances which defeat this presumption. (Thus she has the epistemic right to believe the speaker’s assertion, unless such defeating conditions obtain).’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 125) This is analogous to Burge’s APT (Acceptance Principle): we are warranted in accepting any p as long as we do not have any positive evidence that defeats p See Burge, (1993, pg.467). Just like the Presumptive Right thesis then, we can assume the trustworthiness of said speaker without positive evidence suggesting trustworthiness. Both assume that people are generally trustworthy. Weiner refers to the APT and Fricker the PR. Non-Reductionists may also hold the Negative Claim (NC): ‘It is not, generally speaking, possible for a hearer to obtain independent confirmation that a given speaker is trustworthy- that what she says will be true.’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 125). It is this Non-Reductive account which Fricker will argue against. I will outline and defend Fricker’s attempt to refute PR which she will argue is based on a false premise; the Negative Claim. One argument for the PR thesis states that since we frequently gain testimonial knowledge and NC holds, we must therefore have an epistemic right to assume the trustworthiness of testimonial claims. Fricker aims to disprove the Negative Claim, and hence this particular argument for the Presumptive Right thesis. However, it should be noted that if succeeding, Fricker will only have disproved one argument for the Non-Reductionist’s Presumptive Right thesis. She aims to provide an account of positive reasons. Fricker’s account is criticised by Matthew Weiner for two main reasons. I will focus on defending her account from his second criticism that the positive reasons Fricker suggests are a) too impractical in lengthy testimonial chains and b) are not sufficient at providing warrant for acceptance. Her Reductionism can I think be improved by a closer examination of the various available positive reasons and of their practicality in short and lengthy testimonial chains which I will go on to argue for. Part one: Fricker’s account The starting point of Fricker’s defence of positive reasons is Local Reductionism. Her account is concerned with whether or not we can gain empirical evidence and hence reasons for the speaker’s trustworthiness. If so we end up with a Local Reductionist (LR) statement: ‘It can be the case that, on a particular occasion O when a speaker S makes an utterance U and in doing so asserts that P to a hearer H, H has, or can gain, independent evidence sufficient to warrant her in taking S to be trustworthy with respect to U.’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 133). This is opposed to Global Reductionism (GR) where one may claim that mostly all of her testimonial beliefs are true warranted via non-testimonial independent evidence. Fricker’s reasoning for rejecting Global Reductionism and supporting Local Reductionism lies in her views on simple-trusted testimony demonstrated by children. Before adulthood she claims, one does not demonstrate rationality in belief formation. One simply trusts what one is told by parents and teachers and uses these testimonial based beliefs to form other beliefs. As a child ‘each of us has, mixed up in her total web of belief, many beliefs acquired through testimony, which at the same time of acquisition were accepted uncritically.’ (Fricker, 1995, pg. 401) We cannot therefore achieve a ‘blanket claim’ of trustworthiness that Global Reductionism pushes for. So, when Fricker states that ‘on a particular occasion O’ one can gain independent positive reasons, she is not saying that on all occasions there is the potential to gain positive reasons. The particular occasions she is referring to are those of grown up rational beings not children. Due to our irrationality in childhood, we cannot have a blanket claim. Fricker also notes that as well as GR being unachievable, it is also not necessary or sufficient. She points out an important issue with GR: even if a person is generally and reliably trustworthy, this gives us no right to presume their continual trustworthiness since it is always possible for one to be tricked by unlucky or unusual circumstances. If one trusts a friend’s testimonial claims and reliably testifies these true claims but is tricked by a one off occasion where said friend lies about p, this would prevent one from gaining positive reasons supporting p. Since this is always plausible, Global Reductionism cannot be achieved. She also claims that even if a person is always or mostly wrong, she can still be correct about mundane beliefs. ‘Mundane beliefs’ Fricker identifies as basic beliefs such as a belief about the weather, how one got to work and what coffee one drank whilst at work that are easily achieved. These will be exemplified later. Given a person who is consistently inaccurate at explaining non-mundane political ideas, it is hard to imagine that same person as failing to present accurate mundane propositions about say the weather. This forms what Weiner calls the APMT (Acceptance Principle Mundane Testimony): ‘We are justified in accepting something that we are told concerning a mundane topic unless there is positive evidence against doing so’ (Weiner, 2003, pg. 262). I will shortly address what Weiner considers the problem with Fricker’s APMT. Fricker’s account is therefore against Global Reductionism because she thinks that we cannot attain positive reasons in childhood or if tricked by unusual circumstances. Due to this, the non-reductionist looks to ‘a special non-empirical normative epistemic principle’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 138). This is the PR which Fricker disagrees with. On Fricker’s point of view however, it is more beneficial to have Local Reductionism for testimony in adulthood than to have a Presumptive Right account. We would, thinks Fricker, be irrational and gullible if we accepted propositions without support. To take Lackey’s example for instance: if an ordinary epistemic agent x walks through the woods and sees what appears to be an alien that drops a book on the floor, and if x then looks at the book when the alien has walked off and reads the proposition p written in english, x would according to Fricker be very gullible to accept p. Lackey thinks likewise. X needs positive reasons to accept p, for even though there are no relevant defeating beliefs that can completely rule out the possibility of aliens that communicate in English, it still seems irrational and gullible to accept p. See Lackey (2006, chp. 8) A closer examination of PR supports Fricker’s argument further. The PR thesis can be categorised into two branches. Strong PR is gullible. It maintains that we have an epistemic right to believe testimony without considering the trustworthiness of individuals. We simply do not need any evidential reasons that even suggest likelihood for the trustworthiness for someone’s character. The Weak PR recognises the importance of trustworthiness but holds that we can simply presume this of individuals. Weak PR hence incorporates what Fricker defines as CSL (Common Sense Linguistics): the language of society accepts that propositions made by individuals are not always truth conductive generating an evident need for an examination of people’s trustworthiness. Given that Fricker supports the importance of evidential reasons she has to reject Strong PR since it has no place for any type of positive evidence. The Weak PR thesis must also be rejected because even though trustworthiness is emphasised it still presumes a blanket claim that most testimony comes accompanied with warrant to believe. In other words, the speaker is always presumed trustworthy until proven otherwise. ‘It is such a blanket PR to believe blindly that constitutes an epistemic charter for the gullible, and to which I am opposed.’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 145). Instead of PR then, Fricker’s account introduces the idea of a continual engagement of rational assessment. One can gain evidential positive reasons for the trustworthiness of individuals by empirical examination. To believe p without this examination would be both irrational and gullible. The positive reasons we can achieve says Fricker, result from the CSL thesis: sincerity & competence. This ‘continual engagement of rational assessment’ is a form of observation then. We can thinks Fricker observe certain traits of a person which enable us to identify their sincerity. (Although, what these traits are is debatable; Adler claims they are hardly noticeable and Fricker indicates they may be achieved at the un-conscious level). This is discussed later although for now let us note that Fricker presumes it is the general air of a person. The CSL thesis also holds that competence comes with sincerity since ‘in the normal case, a serious assertoric utterance by a speaker S is true just if S is sincere, i.e. believes what she knowingly asserts, and the belief… is true’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 145). This is an empirical claim to the recognition that when sincere speakers utter a truth, they usually have been competent at achieving this p. This claim I concur is fine if we agree to ignore such sceptical cases that aim to undermine the general competence of testifiers e.g. the classic Gettier cases. But, sure enough later on in Fricker’s work she adds the requirement to ignore such ‘freak cases’ as she refers to them. Cases where we have been tricked by external conditions out of the ordinary are not our concern here. The justification for rational assessment does not require extensive research in the form of top security Government work. The ‘hearer should be discriminating in her attitude to the speaker, in that she should be continually evaluating him for trustworthiness throughout their exchange, in the light of evidence, or cues’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 145). This type of examination can be performed by the ordinary epistemic person. To pick up on sincerity, we will be aware of one’s characteristic tone of voice and general attitude performed. This kind of monitoring should be carried out to insure we are being rational and avoiding gullibility. If we do not concentrate our attention on specific features of the speech act but merely assume trustworthiness, we will not find positive reasons. Note that there is a clear distinction between Fricker’s LR and the PR thesis since with neither types of PR is there any form of rational assessment of the speaker. One merely presumes trustworthiness or considers it irrelevant. Fricker does claim that sincerity and competence are default positions in mundane issues since it is usually the case that a speaker is both competent and sincere but this is not a PR presumption of trustworthiness. We may do better here to think of Fricker’s term ‘default-position’ as instead ‘beliefs’ of competence and sincerity since these beliefs constitute positive reasons. They may be referred to as default only in the sense that they are usually always present, but they are rationally observed and found by the hearer rather than assumed but not checked. One is continually engaging in assessment and this can never be conducted without any evidence. Fricker explains that the circumstances of the testimonial act and the abilities of speakers are evidential factors that are regularly taken into account. Finally, the account of positive reasons of sincerity and competence has rested on Fricker’s CSL theory. This theory could be open to criticism then. Yet, I think Fricker’s justification for the CSL thesis seems plausible. She argues that it is because we are competent and sincere beings that we have introduced these psychological characterisations to describe people. It is a basic fact, empirically exhibited, that we often demonstrate sincere and competent testimony. With the addition of rational assessment we can still identify when speakers do not demonstrate these properties, so it is not a presumption of trustworthiness that the PR theorist supports. Also mundane claims, according to Acceptance Principle Mundane Testimony, can be accompanied with the beliefs of competence and sincerity. These beliefs are also rationally observed by the hearer. It is an empirically established theory, hence it is crucial to bear in mind that ‘the fact that there are certain default settings regarding its construction does not detract from this’ (Fricker, cited in Chakrabarti & Matilal, 1994, pg. 155). Part two: Weiner’s Criticism Weiner argues against Fricker’s Local Reductionism. The issue for him centres on the NSC (Non-Sceptical Constraint): we are often justified in testimonial beliefs without having independent evidential reasons supporting them. The most prominent example of this would be historical beliefs acquired through testimony in the absence of positive reasons. In order to satisfy the NSC, Local Reductionism needs some kind of acceptance principle because it does not provide a global account of how we attain justification which the NSC requires. Fricker has coupled her LR theory with the Acceptance Principle Mundane Testimony, yet this claims Weiner cannot satisfy the NSC. So we must accept another principle- he will argue that APT is needed. Let us examine. Firstly then, Weiner notes, that GR can immediately be rejected. GR we can recall stated that one almost all of the time has independent evidential positive reasons for accepting testimonial claims. Yet, for Weiner this seems far too impractical to put into practise if we consider the amount of background research we would need in order to warrant so many beliefs. Weiner thinks we would be engaging in a troublesome activity since, as C. A.J. Coady claims, most if not all testimonial claims are based on further testimonial claims. Coady and Weiner hold that GR is far too impractical to allow us even a slim chance of being able to cope with the quantity of field-work needing to be examined for testimonial support. He writes that ‘many of us have never seen a baby born, nor have most of us examined the circulation of the blood nor the actual geography of the world nor any fair sample of the laws of the land, nor have we made the observations that lie behind our knowledge that the lights in the sky are heavenly bodies immensely distant’ (Coady, 1992, pg. 82) For further discussion on GR see Coady’s ‘Tesimony: A Philosophical Study, 1992’. Fricker would of course be in agreement here since her reasons for rejecting GR included the fact that children have a large proportion of irrationally held beliefs. Equally, Reid thinks that ‘reducing the epistemic status of every item of knowledge by testimony to other epistemic resources… we are committed to a project that is not only enormously time-consuming but incoherent’ (Insole, 2000, pg. 46). Global Reductionism then is not compatible with the Non-sceptical constraint; in other words it seems to fail. Contrary to this view, other epistemologists such as Adler have argued that this background of beliefs ‘which is out of focus, supplies an enormous, if hardly noticed, critical foundation for the information seeker’ (Adler, 2002, pg. 136). The vast array of background beliefs available as suggested by Adler will be my main point of focus in section three of the paper by means of demonstrating Faulkner’s positive evaluation of background reasons. Though, I will not go so far as to claim a global account of positive background reasons but rather Fricker’s local reductionism for the same reasons as her- positive reasons are not acquired in childhood. What about LR? Weiner writes it needs to first be modified before we can assess it against the NSC. LR seems to contrast with having default justification. Fricker argued that the default justification of mundane testimony still acts as positive reasons (sincerity & competence). Weiner conversely wants to make a clear distinction between positive reasons and default acceptance and so modifies Fricker’s LR into LR*: ‘To be justified in believing a particular thing that I have been told, I must either have default justification for believing that the testimony is reliable, or have positive evidence of the reliability of that speaker with respect to that piece of testimony, where this evidence does not rely on that testimony’. (Weiner, 2003, 258) So positive evidence for the LR* can be achieved from other testimonial claims as long as it is not the testimonial claim in question. This rids us of Coady’s worry; it no longer seems impossible to gain positive reasons because we can still base reasons on other testimonial claims. By emphasising positive reasons this is opposed to Reid who holds the Principle of Credulity of Testimony. This states, we do not need positive reasons because we have a disposition to believe the testimony of others and hence trust them. LR* holds that we do not have to search for non-testimonial support. However, the NSC states that most of our beliefs are justified. LR* doesn’t seem to provide this though as Weiner claims we do not gain positive reasons often enough to satisfy NSC. There are many occasions he argues, where we are not aware of the speaker’s sincerity or competence. If this is the case that we sometimes but not often enough gain positive reasons, then the only way to get around the NSC is to rely on default justification. Weiner hence proposes the Acceptance Principle. Let us take a closer look at APMT. If we consider a testimonial chain, ‘(APMT) would sometimes allow us to gain justification for accepting non-mundane testimony by accepting testimony on a mundane topic that implies the speaker’s competence concerning the non-mundane topic’ (Weiner, 2003, pg. 262). For example, A tells B the proposition p that ‘there was a crying baby in Starbucks today’. This is non-mundane. It is not a basic claim because not everyone can know of this incident and it is not easily found out unless in the right circumstances. A clearer distinction between mundane and non-mundane beliefs may be for example that of reading the time on your watch and the testimonial claim of the answer to a complicated maths equation just worked out. We are more sceptical about the latter testimony and not everyone can achieve this. I shall however stick to my original example of a non-mundane event to apply Fricker’s thoughts. To attain warrant for believing A, B needs a positive reason and in this case a mundane p is provided from A who tells B that ‘I was in that same Starbucks when the baby cried’. This example provides B with a positive mundane evidential reason to believe p. B now knows that A is justified in believing p because he knows A was in Starbucks when the baby cried. However, if the chain is expanded to include at least one more member, an account of positive reasons can become impractical thinks Weiner. B tells C, A’s p. C then also needs positive supporting reasons to provide her with warrant to believe p. So as well as recalling p to C, B must also tell C that A said that he ‘was in that same Starbucks when the baby cried’. As a result, when C tells another person p, she must state that A told B that p and that B told her that A told B that he ‘was in that same Starbucks when the baby cried’. Weiner asks us to imagine how complicated the supporting dialogue would have to be in a testimonial chain if we consider testimony for a historical event. This appears to be quite a problem for Fricker’s APMT if we are following her advice to search for A’s competence (or sincerity). It does I agree seem impractical to assess some p based on the competence positive reason if we are considering the original testifier in a lengthy testimonial chain, (as Weiner supposes we are). It also seems apparent that this issue would equally occur in other domains. There often are rather lengthy chains of testifiers involved in scientific claims which have been checked by scientists, published by additional testifiers, taught by teachers and testified to friends etc. Weiner hence claims APMT is problematic in lengthy chains of testimony. (It may though also be claimed that this is a problem with any Reductionist theory). Contrastingly, Weiner’s APT would not have this problem since one can gain warrant for accepting any testimonial claim in the absence of positive reasons of the original testifier. I will however, later suggest that it is not necessary for achieving positive reasons that one look to the start of each testimonial chain and that instead many positive reasons are observed from the last speaker. Additionally, these positive reasons thinks Weiner, are not sufficient on their own to provide a hearer with warrant to accept p. Having a reason to think A is competent at testifying mundane topics such as his location should not provide reason to believe his non-mundane claim- that a particular incident occurred. In a more extreme scenario, Weiner could demonstrate how just because one is competent at telling the time on his watch, this does not mean he is able to correctly testify about a particular political argument say. Weiner argues that: ‘It will only reinforce what common sense tells us, that she is competent on mundane topics (and sincere). Evidence of her reliability on non-mundane topics, by definition, must go beyond these deliverances of common sense’ (Weiner, 2003, pg. 263). As a consequence then, when there is nothing odd (no defeaters) about p we can apply the APT. We can presume the speaker’s trustworthiness. When there is something odd about testimony however, Weiner thinks we would need positive evidence. Weiner’s views on what would count as positive evidence- only in the rare cases where there is something odd about testimony- are not fleshed out enough I think for he merely mentions the thought that one should look towards reliability of testimonies, but this is not here my concern. Rather, I wish to defend Fricker’s APMT against Weiner’s criticism and by doing so I shall suggest Faulkner’s supporting account of positive reasons. I will attempt to argue that a) there are various different types of positive reasons available to hearers and so if Fricker’s account of sincerity & competence is not sufficient enough for Weiner to provide warrant then there are other reasons which may be sufficient. Secondly, b), I will suggest that other positive reasons are not burdensome on lengthy testimonial chains. Part three: a defence of APMT Weiner has argued as opposed to Fricker, that positive reasons for testimony are not necessary. We can trust individual speakers without supporting evidence. So, a defence of Fricker’s account would clearly start with the statement that it is necessary to have positive reasons; (this supports Lackey’s ALIEN argument stated above which Fricker’s work accords with). Here I will argue that we have a psychological disposition to believe the testimony of others only when supporting evidential beliefs are present. Faulkner for instance argues: ‘Given that a speaker’s intentions in communicating need not be informative and given the relevance of these intentions to the acquisition of testimonial knowledge, I take this psychological disposition to be rational. It is doxastically irresponsible to accept testimony without some background belief in the testimony’s credibility or truth’ (Faulkner, 2000, pg.587). For Faulkner, background beliefs act as positive reasons and these reasons can be seen to provide empirical evidence for the trustworthiness of speakers in the same way Fricker has stressed. This is on a par with Fricker’s view of testimony since she thinks it would be gullible and irrational to accept a PR account; we cannot merely presume trustworthiness when reliable testifiers can get things wrong and consistently inaccurate believers can get things right. So, we need to analyse these positive reasons in order to conclude their necessity. If positive reasons can be seen as sufficient to provide warrant to believe testimonies and as practical in testimonial chains, Weiner’s account will seem implausible. In my example above of p: ‘there was a crying baby in Starbucks today’, an issue Weiner highlighted was that to know that A is competent and sincere with respect to mundane beliefs would not support a non-mundane p. Even though Fricker would argue that these positive reasons are enough to support non-mundane testimonies, Weiner may be more contented I suspect with an account of additional positive reasons that do not depend so much on the character of the original testifier and do not just highlight the relation between mundane beliefs but can exhibit a relation between mundane and non-mundane beliefs. The problem for Weiner then is that if one manifests competence with mundane beliefs, there is nothing that would suggest a transfer of continual competence to non-mundane beliefs. We would do better to identify additional positive reasons and Faulkner does just that. As we shall see, many positive reasons are not based on the original testifier. This I think demonstrates how positive reasons are not impractical in lengthy chains. Positive reasons about the last testifier in the chain and that moment that p is testified can I will argue provide good enough evidence to justify acceptance of p. I will now attempt to show how my example of a non-mundane testimonial proposition fits with Faulkner’s account and hence provides justification. This will I think disvalue Weiner’s criticism. There are various positive reasons a hearer may obtain according to Faulkner. We could have a) general beliefs about the type of testimonies, b) situation reasons, c) character based reasons and d) relevant reasons. Starting with testimonial types, Faulkner claims that we automatically and over time characterise testimonies into different types depending on how credible we have previously found them. For example, if p is told by a close friend we would be likely to regard her p as trustworthy based on past experience of truthful utterances from said friend. We have claims Faulkner a ‘statistical syllogism: testimony of type x is credible, this testimony is of type x, and therefore this testimony is credible’ (Faulkner, 2002, pg. 357). If B was a close friend to C then, C would already possess a positive reason for accepting the credibility of B’s testimony that A testified because the fact that B is a credible testifier suggests the probable truthfulness of the testimony p. Secondly, we can obtain positive contextual reasons in the form of situational reasons. If C meets B on the street in her home village, C may still gain a positive situational reason to believe B since her village performs like most ordinary villages in that when receiving a testimonial claim it is usually the case that that testimony is true. In certain types of situations then, testimonial claims are again likely to be truth conductive. Situational reasons are valuable for Faulkner because we are quite accurate at judging each situation in a similar manner to other hearers. If we are all quite adequate at identifying promising situations for testimony, this empirical type of examination seems likely to identify trustworthy testimonies of individuals and hence true propositions. One would then be justified in accepting p via B in this situation. Another contextual reason is a character based reason. This would be similar to Fricker’s ‘sincerity’ positive reason. By making an assessment of character, we would be looking for certain traits of the individual. However, this type of positive reason thinks Faulkner does not provide sufficient enough evidence to allow warrant since observable ‘behaviour in terms of an assessment of character both under-estimate situational factors and over-estimate the stability of an individual’s behaviour across situations’ (Faulkner, 2002, pg. 365). In other words, we are not here as accurate as we are for identifying promising situations. In relation to my example then, it may in fact be the case that B is not accurate enough to identify insincerity as expressed by A and hence in this case B’s testimony to C would not come with a positive reason concerning the character of the original testifier. This seems fair; we can all think of examples in which we have misjudged someone’s character and hence been lead to believe a falsehood. Finally though, one could already have an existing belief. For instance, we could take into account the consequences of the speaker telling a false belief. If C is indeed a close friend of B then it is hardly likely that B would deliberately tell C a false p. The cost of their friendship may be too high to forgo telling a falsehood. C trusts B because she knows that B would not want to jeopardise her friendship and one way of this happening would be by lying about the truth of p. The same consideration may apply to A when telling B if they also have a close connection. It seems then fairly certain that a hearer can at least achieve one type of positive reason for accepting a speaker’s p- although it seems more likely I may add to attain more than one positive reason- and I hope by my demonstration of a non-mundane testimonial act and Fricker’s argument for positive reasons, that one can see the appeal of Reductive accounts of testimony. Indeed, the much needed emphasis on positive reasons can be seen in other works also for example Lackey claims that: ‘ordinary hearers are confronted with a plethora of epistemically relevant positive reasons that come in a variety of forms. Such reasons are often not explicitly brought to mind but they nonetheless play a crucial role in our epistemic lives, as we tacitly discriminate among and evaluate pieces of incoming information, and compare such input with our background beliefs’ (Lackey, 2010, pg. 183). Faulkner’s work usefully highlights types of positive reasons which can provide hearers with mundane testimonial beliefs- evidential positive reasons- for accepting non-mundane testimonial propositions such as ‘there was a crying baby in Starbucks today’. Although we should be wary of character bases reasons In fact, even though both Faulkner and Lackey provide detailed argument in support of positive reasons, both of their accounts of testimony are hybrid accounts- a mixture of both the Reductionist and Non- Reductionist positions. However, this fact does not in any way weaken the force of Faulkner’s evaluation as depicted in this paper. For further debate see Lackey’s ‘Learning from words, 2008’ and Faulkner’s ‘Knowledge on Trust, 2011’. . We can see that the Acceptance Principle is not the only way to satisfy the Non-Sceptical Constraint. If positive reasons are readily available, Fricker’s Reductive account succeeds. Hence, Weiner’s worry that we do not have available enough positive reasons in general and in the form of mundane beliefs fails. Also, by applying my example to Faulkner’s assessment of positive reasons it seems that Weiner was also wrong to criticise Fricker’s APMT for being impractical and burdensome in lengthy testimonial chains. Many positive reasons do not derive directly from the original testifier in lengthy chains and so it is hardly impractical so achieve them. To take one for example, a situational reason depends only on the moment that that testimony is being conversed between the last speaker and hearer. If each individual in the chain achieves a situational reason to accept p, then no individual has to search back in the chain by more than one person for the relevant situational reason. This is practical. There is no need to know of the situation that the original testifier testified in. Further improvements for this defence may include a ranking of positive reasons and an explanation of which reasons override others. If an existing positive reason is more reliable than say a situational reason there needs to be some constraint in place which will allow the rational hearer to believe p on the basis of the existing reason without considering as seriously the situation that said testimony has been told in. If say, C is close friends with B and was told by B over coffee one morning- a reliable situation- the p ‘bananas grow in the soil’, C would it seems be justified in taking her existing belief ‘bananas grow in trees’ as an overriding positive reason to the situational positive reason. I am not suggesting that existing beliefs will always override situational beliefs because if this were the case it would be hard to accept any newly found fact were hearers to privilege their existing webs of belief over a less reliable situation where for example one scientist testifies that ‘the earth is actually spherical’. There is a time for ridding ourselves of existing beliefs such as ‘the earth is flat’ even in unlikely situations and so this needs to be agreed upon by epistemologists. Fricker hints in her work that there needs to be some agreement on the degrees of likelihood and hence acceptance of particular positive reasons by means of questioning how rational it is to believe positive reasons on specific occasions. It is rational to accept positive reasons but it may be more or less rational to believe one reason over another. This would be no easy job but I think it possible to incorporate some kind of formulae for positive reasons at least. For example, I would suggest that the acceptance of new beliefs- that contradict existing beliefs- could take place when a certain amount of testimonial support is offered by experts. Take the claim p that ‘the earth is actually spherical’; if enough scientists investigate and hence form the belief that p then the general public can begin to accept this new belief. The public would have positive reasons for the general type of belief i.e. that when a large and growing number of scientists begin to accept p, this is good enough reason to accept p. It may be the case that we can formulate an advisory ranking rather than a definite ranking of positive reasons but this should not perturb us for this after all seems to be the project of ethicists. Fricker I conclude has successfully devalued the PR thesis (and in turn the NC). This can be exemplified by Faulkner’s more detailed account of positive reasons and her LR appears to withstand criticism. Weiner’s worry that a) there are not enough positive reasons available and sufficient to provide warrant in order to believe said p and b) that positive reasons are burdensome in lengthy chains has I think been disvalued. It is now up to Fricker to provide an additional agreement in regards to the ranking of acceptance of different positive reasons. Which positive reasons should we take as more accurate than others and how do we figure out these degrees of accuracy? These types of considerations need to be examined in more depth I think in order to strengthen Fricker’s account of testimony further. Word count: 5,991 Blibliography: Adler, J. E. (2002), Belief’s own ethics, Cambridge; Mass; London: MIT Press Burge, T. (1995), Content Preservation, Philosophical Issues. Vol. 6, Content, pg. 271- 300, JSTOR Archive Collection [Online]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org (Accessed 17 March 2015) Chakrabarti, A. & Matilal, B. 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(2010), Learning from Words: testimony as a source of knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press Lackey, J. & Sosa, E. (2006), The epistemology of testimony, Oxford: Clarendon Press Reid, T. (2000,eds.), An inquiry into the human mind: on the principles of common sense, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Weiner, M. (2003), Accepting Testimony, The Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 53, No. 211, pg. 256-264, JSTOR Archive Collection [Online]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org (Accessed 17 March 2015) 16