Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief

by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

In this book Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. Some of these authorities can be in the moral and religious domains.

Why have people for thousands of years accepted epistemic authority in religious communities? A religious community's justification for authority is typically based on beliefs unique to that community. Unfortunately, that often means that from the community's perspective, its justifying claims are insulated from the outside; whereas from an outside perspective, epistemic authority in the community appears unjustified. But as Zagzebski's argument shows, an individual's acceptance of authority in her community can be justified by principles that outsiders accept, and the particular beliefs justified by that authority are not immune to external critiques.

Genres: Philosophy

296 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2012

Reviews

[Hannah]

Okay that was zany. Everything is justified by “conscientious reflection” but I’m not sure what that is, in the end….

[William Schram · Rating 2 out of 5]

Epistemology is a field of Philosophy dealing with how we know things. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski is a professor at the University of Oklahoma. She wrote several other books, none of which I have read. The common thread in her other books is the philosophy of faith and belief.

I will start my review by reiterating my stance on religion; I am an atheist. I stopped believing in God around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus. Other people can believe what they want; that is the beauty of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. I like reading other perspectives and ideas on different fields of inquiry. The book is called Epistemic Authority and examines the philosophical support of belief.

The book is a scholarly examination of belief through the lens of epistemology. To paraphrase Zagzebski's core argument, if I know someone whose opinion I trust, I have to believe their beliefs as my own. She calls it the Principle of Epistemic Trust in Others. Another name for it is the bandwagon fallacy.

Zagzebski spends the rest of the book explaining why her argument is sound and how it differs from an error in rational thinking.

I didn't enjoy the book, but it was fascinating. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Ncrdusa]

NYT 7/15/2

[J. Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Epistemic Authority, Zagzebski works through various topics to develop an justification for accepting epistemic beliefs and knowledge based on the beliefs of others. To do this, she first rejects epistemic self-reliance and epistemic egoism - namely, the stance that someone else's belief that p serves no reason for me to believe p. Instead, if I have reasons to trust that my own beliefs aim at the truth, and if I recognize I am not the only epistemic agent with reasons to trust their own beliefs, I therefore must extend the possibility of trustworthy beliefs to others. This rejection (chapter one), self-trust (chapter two), and other-trust (chapter three) triad serves as an unofficial "first part" of the book, after which Zagzebski works through this rejection of egoism in the realms of emotions, testimony, religious communities, disagreement, and more.

What I liked most about this project is that there are a lot of distinctions drawn to develop the stance Zagzebski promotes. I'll highlight the two I believe ground most of the work in the book. First, she differentiates between deliberative and theoretical reasons for belief, where the former are reasons for believing p that are essentially linked to me and only, while the latter are reasons for believing p that are logically or probabilistically linked to the truth of p itself. Second, she creates various coupled theses for justification in each chapter, focused on the topic of each chapter, based on the format that Thesis 1 focuses on if I believe someone else is more likely to form a true belief then I am more likely to find a true belief if I accept them as an authority, and Thesis 2 focuses on the stronger claim that if I am more likely to form a true belief that withstands conscientious self-reflection by relying on another as an authority then I ought to belief based on that authority.

One of my biggest problems with the book is that the majority of her arguments come from simple arguments by analogy. For the amount of epistemic weight of the claims, this seems rather cursory. My more substantial criticism, though, is that the coupled theses in each chapter seem weak to challenges of slippery slopes, which I don't believe Zagzebski has adequately addressed. Instead, it feels like this is a conciliatory approach to epistemic claims and disagreements, which is an approach I have never found compelling.

[Alexander Asay · Rating 1 out of 5]

UGA: Epistemology