Shepherd's social epistemology: A nonreductive theory of testimony and the question of epistemic autonomy

Abstract

In this article, I extract Mary Shepherd's social epistemology primarily from her attack on Hume's dismissive account of miracle reports. On my reading, she adopts a nonreductionist position on testimony, arguing that the hearer is both caused and justified to regard testimonies as true by default, that is, in the absence of any undefeated defeater. In contrast to Humean reductionism, we do not need to provide positive evidence for the truth of the testified proposition, for instance, by appealing to the observed reliability of the speaker or speakers generally. In fleshing out her account, I clarify why her nonreductionism does not lead Shepherd to question our epistemic autonomy—the idea that we are supposed to draw our own conclusions. Indeed, I argue that it is precisely her commitment to epistemic autonomy that explains why, despite following Reid's similar account of testimony, she emphatically denies that we could justify metaphysical principles by appealing to common sense or universal agreement among people. Relatedly, I suggest that Shepherd thinks that while we have an a priori right to trust testimonies about events (whether ordinary or extraordinary) that we have not witnessed ourselves, we should never base our philosophical judgments simply on others' authority.