To Trust or not to Trust? Children’s Social Epistemology

Abstract

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Nonreductionists believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children's attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism.

Children weigh the number of informants and perceptual uncertainty when identifying objects

“…A growing body of research shows that young children select among their informants (e.g., Clément, 2010;Harris, 2007;Harris, 2012). For instance, 4-and 5-year-olds prefer to learn from an accurate informant rather than an inaccurate informant (e.g., Birch, Vauthier, & Bloom, 2008;Clément, Koenig, & Harris, 2004;Corriveau & Harris, 2009b;Pasquini, Corriveau, Koenig, & Harris, 2007;Scofield & Behrend, 2008).…”

The power of well-connected arguments: Early sensitivity to the connective because

“…Accordingly, there is now a rich literature showing that, from very early on, children are able to use different cues to assess the value of testimony. Starting at 3 or 4 years of age, they evaluate speakers based on their competence and benevolence (Birch, Vauthier, & Bloom, 2008;Clément, 2010;Koenig & Harris, 2005;Mascaro & Sperber, 2009). At 6 years of age, children understand that people are less likely to be truthful when they make self-serving or self-interested claims (Heyman, Fu, & Lee, 2007;Mills & Keil, 2005).…”

Socialising Epistemic Cognition

“…In their exploration of recent philosophical epistemology, they note the increased focus in the literature on 'testimony' as a source of knowledge; noting that this facet of coming to know is largely ignored or rejected by epistemic cognition literature which has tended to view a reliance on testimony qua 'given' 'authority', or 'self-experience' as maladaptive. This shift to readmit the notion of testimonial knowledge is also reflected in some recent psychological literature which notes the importance of 'believing what you're told' in many contexts, including in educational contexts (see, for example, Harris, 2012; and the interesting discussion of children's belief in testimony in Clément, 2010). Chinn, Buckland and Samarapungavan thus propose a model which, "differs from the current prevalent conceptualization of the structure of knowledge" (Chinn et al, 2011, p. 150) in proposing a multi-rather than uni-dimensional structure of knowledge, and in emphasising "some more specific structural forms such as mechanisms and causal frameworks" (Chinn et al, 2011, p. 150).…”