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The Racist and the Existentialist: A Testimonial Account of the Basing Relation by Hannah Tierney (Lewis & Clark College)

Date: April 15 2010, 5:00pm Location: John R. Howard Hall 302

The relationship between a belief and its warrant is an incredibly important aspect of an appropriate theory of knowledge. Without such an account, the bar for knowledge can be set both too high and too low. Furthermore, forming an account of the basing relation both motivates and tests internalist and externalist intuitions. In this paper, I examine Marshall Swain’s causal connection, Hamid Vahid’s Davidsonian understanding, Gilbert Harman’s explanatory account, Joseph Tolliver’s probability-centric theory and Keith Lehrer’s testimonial version of the basing relation. In evaluating these theories, I explore several variations of two central thought experiments: Lehrer’s Racist case and Harman’s Existentialist example. I explore the implications to which each theory is committed in relation to these cases, concluding that Lehrer’s testimonial account is the most acceptable.

 The relationship between belief and warrant is important for any account of knowledge; it is the relationship that determines where the bar be set for knowledge.  In this paper, I  explore five accounts of the basing relation– three causal theories and two doxastic defend a testimonial understanding of the connection between warrant and belief. In so doing, I explore how different theories of the basing relation explain many variations of Keith Lehrer’s Raco case and Gilbert Harman’s Albert the Existentialist case. I have distinguished between two doxastic accounts, both clarifying what I take to be Lehrer’s position and rejecting Tolliver’s overly strict conception of the basing relation. Clearly, it would be beneficial for Lehrer to include this account in his later work in order to defend his view from the objection that it does not require a connection between warrant and belief.

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