engleski

Blind Trust

The epistemic status of testimony depends partly on the answer to the following question: Are we justified in accepting other people's reports in an immediate, uncritical fashion, without any assessment or, alternatively, does justified acceptance rely on critical assessment? In this paper the author tries to analyze whether we are epistemic ally responsible or rationally sensible when we are trustful or when we critically assess our informants. The target of criticism is anti-reductionist's thesis that credulity is both a psychological phenomenon and an epistemic principle. The author tries to show that we are not epistemically responsible when we accept other people's words immediately, uncritically, without any inspection or reliance on our experience or some other source of knowledge.

testimony; reductionism; anti-reductionism; epistemic responisbility

Rad je objavljen u časopisu koji su po vrsnoći izjednačeni s časopisima s međunarodno priznatom recenzijom (NN 2/97)