Archives For Benjamin W. McCraw

Combes on McCraw on the Nature of Epistemic Trust: A Rejoinder, Benjamin W. McCraw

SERRC —  August 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

Author Information: Benjamin W. McCraw, University of South Carolina Upstate, bmccraw@uscupstate.edu

McCraw, Benjamin W. “Combes on McCraw on the Nature of Epistemic Trust: A Rejoinder.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 8 (2016): 28-31.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-39F

Please refer to:

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Image credit: Marius Brede, via flickr

My genuine thanks to Richard Combes for continuing his thoughtful analysis of my views on epistemic trust. In this really short reply, let me offer a quick re-rejoinder to a few of his latest comments.

Combes on Trust-In and Trust-That

First, let’s get clear on Combes’ view. He claims that “one epistemically trusts S if and only if one has certain beliefs about S’s thick reliability” (2016, 8) where ‘thick reliability’ refers to the state where “one has consciously tracked S’s past history, judged that S enjoys some perhaps unique expertise, and therefore should depend on s’s testimony…” (8). That is, H trusts S just in case H believes that:

(a) H has tracked S’s history with respect to the accuracy of S’s utterances,
(b) S’s track record is reliable and
(c) H should depend on S’s future assertions.  Continue Reading…

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McCraw on the Nature of Epistemic Trust—Part II, Richard Combes

SERRC —  June 6, 2016 — 1 Comment

Author Information: Richard Combes, University of South Carolina Upstate, rcombes@uscupstate.edu

Combes, Richard. “McCraw on the Nature of Epistemic Trust—Part II.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 6 (2016): 7-10.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-30A

Please refer to:

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Image credit: Arne Halvorsen, via flickr

In my original response to “The Nature of Epistemic Trust,” by Benjamin McCraw (2015), I defended the view that epistemic trust reduces to one’s belief that another’s allegedly successful ability to track the truth in the past underwrites confidence in the latter’s present and future testimony (2015). On the basis of the introspective data, I deny that any irreducibly distinct, non-propositional attitude of epistemic trust supervenes on such a belief. Epistemic trust is not presented to consciousness as an episodic quale. There is nothing that it is like to trust someone other than being convinced that the trustee’s history validates the truster’s continued support in him or her as a beacon of knowledge.  Continue Reading…

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Existence and Epistemic Trust, J. Aaron Simmons

SERRC —  December 3, 2015 — 3 Comments

Author Information: J. Aaron Simmons, Furman University, aaron.simmons@furman.edu

Simmons, J. Aaron. “Existence and Epistemic Trust.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4, no. 12 (2015): 14-19.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-2uR

Please refer to:

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Image credit: Steve Rotman, via flickr

The history of philosophy repeatedly demonstrates that it is possible to read an author differently, and maybe even better, than she reads herself. For example, in many ways, Edmund Husserl quite sensibly considered his phenomenological project primarily to be a matter of epistemology. Yet, Martin Heidegger goes a long way toward showing the ontological stakes of Husserl’s epistemology such that phenomenology gets radically rethought not by going counter to Husserl, but, as Heidegger (1968) would put it in What is Called Thinking?, by going to Husserl’s encounter.[1] While reading Benjamin W. McCraw’s (2015) excellent essay “The Nature of Epistemic Trust,” I was struck by the way that, like Heidegger’s reading of Husserl, McCraw’s account of epistemic trust (ET) productively opens onto issues far beyond where McCraw himself goes. In this short response to McCraw’s essay, I will look to what I consider to be the existential stakes of McCraw’s proposal regarding epistemic trust. Crucially, I do not take my thoughts here to be a direct critique of McCraw, but instead an attempt to think with him by taking seriously the importance of epistemic trust and its implications for subjectivity and social life more broadly.  Continue Reading…

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McCraw on the Nature of Epistemic Trust, Richard E. Combes

SERRC —  August 20, 2015 — 5 Comments

Author Information: Richard E. Combes, University of South Carolina Upstate, rcombes@uscupstate.edu

Combes, Richard E. “McCraw on the Nature of Epistemic Trust.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4, no. 8 (2015): 76-78.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-2fr

Please refer to:

trust

Image credit: purplejavatroll, via flickr

In “The Nature of Epistemic Trust”, Benjamin W. McCraw (2015) offers an appealing account of what it means to trust someone epistemically. More than merely the recognition that some state of affairs is the case, epistemic trust includes an affective, non-propositional attitude as well, namely, a strong conviction in the integrity of the one trusted. According to McCraw, if Jones places epistemic trust in Smith that some proposition is true, the following four conditions need to be satisfied:  Continue Reading…

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