Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:19:47.202Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Gift of Testimony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2020

Alessandra Tanesini
Alessandra Tanesini*
Affiliation:
Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
*
Email: Tanesini@cardiff.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper I argue that in Western contemporary societies testimony is structured by norms of reciprocation and thus is best understood as involving the exchange of gifts rather than, as philosophers and game theorists have tended to presume, market transactions. My argument is based on an initial analysis of the reactive attitudes that are exhibited in testimonial exchanges. I highlight the central role played by the reciprocating attitudes of gratitude and gratification respectively in the recipient and the donor of testimony. This analysis leads to an account of the speech act of telling that is the primary vehicle of testimony. Telling, I argue, is a commissive but it is not, as it is usually presumed, akin to promising. Instead, its nature is that of an offer of a gift. Finally, I develop an account of the norms of trust and trustfulness as reciprocating social norms. I show that adopting these norms provides a particularly effective solution of the problem of cooperation. The solution is particularly effective because it incentivises both the sharing of epistemic goods and the acquisition of further such goods so that one is able to share them.

Keywords

epistemologytestimonygiftsnormscooperationreciprocation
Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 17 , Special Issue 3: Epistemic Norms as Social Norms Conference , September 2020 , pp. 331 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anscombe, G.E.M. (1979). ‘What Is It To Believe Someone?’ In Delaney, C.F. (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief, pp. 141–51. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Austin, J.L. (1961). ‘Other Minds.’ In Urmson, J.O. and Warnock, C.J. (eds), Philosophical Papers, pp. 42–84. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Baier, A. (1986). ‘Trust and Antitrust.’ Ethics 96(2), 231–60. doi: 10.2307/2381376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, J. (2018). ‘What is Epistemic Blame?’ Noûs. Online first, doi: 10.1111/nous.12270.Google Scholar
Carmichael, H.L. and MacLeod, W.B. (1997). ‘Gift Giving and the Evolution of Cooperation.’ International Economic Review 38(3), 485–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, M. (2018). ‘On Insults.’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4(4), 510–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, S. (2017). ‘Trust as a Second-Personal Attitude (of the Heart).’ In Faulkner, P. and Simpson, T. (eds), The Philosophy of Trust, pp. 35–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, S. (2019). ‘Gratitude as a Second-Personal Attitude (of the Heart).’ In Roberts, R. and Telech, D. (eds), The Moral Psychology of Gratitude, pp. 139–59. London: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Faulkner, P. (2014). Knowledge on Trust. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, S. (2015). Assertion: On the Philosophical Significance of Assertoric Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hazlett, A. (2017). ‘On the Special Insult of Refusing Testimony.’ Philosophical Explorations 20(suppl. 1), 37–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, D. (2020). ‘Are Epistemic Norms Fundamentally Social Norms?’ Episteme. doi: 10.1017/epi.2019.49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, D. and Graham, P. (2017 a). ‘Epistemic Norms and the Epistemic Game they Regulate: The Basic Structured Costs and Benefits.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 54(4), 367–82.Google Scholar
Henderson, D. and Graham, P. (2017 b). ‘A Refined Account of the “Epistemic Game”: Epistemic Norms, Temptations, and Epistemic Cooperation.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 54(4), 383–95.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E. and Gintis, H. (eds) (2004). Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinchman, E.S. (2005). ‘Telling as Inviting to Trust.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70(3), 562–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kukla, R. and Lance, M. (2009). ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!': The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Macnamara, C. (2013). ‘“Screw you!” and “thank you”.’ Philosophical Studies 165(3), 893–914.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malcolm, F. (2018). ‘How to Insult and Compliment a Testifier.’ Episteme 15(1), 50–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, A.M. (2014). How We Hope: A Moral Psychology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (1990). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge Classics, 2002.Google Scholar
McKenna, M. (2012). Conversation and Responsibility. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moran, R. (2006). ‘Getting Told and Being Believed.’ In Lackey, J. and Sosa, E. (eds), The Epistemology of Testimony, pp. 272–306. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, S. (1994). A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoemaker, D. (2015). Responsibility from the Margins, 1st edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strawson, P.F. (2008). Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanesini, A. (2016). ‘I – ‘Calm Down, Dear': Intellectual Arrogance, Silencing and Ignorance.’ Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 90(1), 71–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, B. (2002). Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar