When we try to express what we believe in, we are in the epistemological domain of testimony. This was once denied to women, no doubt for some currently understood learning about not taking stuff literally, known in that past. For the temporal arrow realists amongst us, it was rot about men telling the truth because they were hanging on to their testes.
Testimony is problematic because we know some people lie. Besides the word of the speaker, hearers also causally depend in believing testimony on other fundamental sources of knowledge like perception, memory, learning, and inference. Can the reliability of testimony be justified by appeal to these sources? Given this is philosophy, some say yes and some say no. According to Fricker, we do someone an epistemic injustice when we do not accord his or her testimony the level of trust it is due, especially because of prejudice. One of Fricker's examples is of Tom Robinson, the central character in To Kill a Mockingbird, on trial for his life. Because he is a ‘Negro’ in this early 20th century viscerally racist southern town, his honest testimony is rejected, unlike the manifestly not credible testimony of the prosecution's local, white witnesses. Fricker argues that epistemic injustice is rooted in culpable prejudice, given the evidence available to citizens. Fricker provides other examples, particularly one from the book and movie “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” to draw out differences in degrees of culpability. Fricker, M., 2007, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. I've withered on about how a 13 year old kid who has been street groomed and raped several times is not allowed testimony through such ugly devices as 'choosing a prostitute lifestyle' (given consent age of 16 what does this have to do with the price of fish?). Testimony on religious experience is notoriously difficult. An epistemological problem enters, however, if our ground for coming to these beliefs is only the speaker's word, since that seems a very weak basis. What reason, if any, is there for a hearer to just take the speaker's word, given that the speaker is capable of lies, deception, error, and poor, ambiguous, or misleading expression? For the hearer to trust the speaker's word is for the hearer to ascribe authority to the speaker. Within the limits of presumed competence, the hearer ascribes to the speaker justification or warrant or knowledge for what she asserts. Chris has some interest in confidence tricksters. I guess this may be in the 'vulnerability issue'. Religious stuff just can't be evidenced like, say, my assertion that palladium has a melting point north of 1500 degrees centigrade. Molly's poetics, which I honestly find lovely, don't work on me as what I think of as argument. Though there is much more to say on the 'evidence', this hardly matters as we don't have differences on such matters as violence and respect for others. On Sunday, February 1, 2015 at 1:50:42 PM UTC, Allan Heretic wrote: > > If you want a social experiment we need to set up moral guidelines from > which to work.. if you disagree with them that is fine. ,, no problem.. > just remember it really is a social experiment,, you need to come up with > what your personal moral compass to replace it.. it is not a cut and paste > exercise. My compass is around 500 created in length,, presentations > should around that length. > > My Compass: > > Love the Allfather with my whole Soul & being... > Love my neighbor as myself > As I judge other so too will I be judge > Do No Harm > Avoid murder, rape or enslavement of others > Avoid being enslaved by possessions > ~~~※☆※~~~ > Jesus said "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things > are plain in the light of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become > manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered." > > > تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين > Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
