Am I Trapped in an Echo Chamber?: A Skeptical Argument for Epistemological Communitarianism
Abstract
This article develops two skeptical arguments targeting our inherently testimonial beliefs – beliefs we cannot confirm or disconfirm independently. I first examine a “mildly” skeptical argument introduced by Keith DeRose, which holds that I cannot know that the Bulls won last night from reading about it in the newspaper because I cannot know that the report is not mistaken. I argue that the most plausible response is that people are justified in trusting sources that are well-reputed in their community. However, this response opens the way for a second, more radically skeptical argument: I cannot know much of what I take myself to know through testimony because I cannot know that I am not trapped in a community in which untrustworthy sources enjoy a good reputation and trustworthy ones do not. After critically examining three general strategies to resist this second argument, I argue that none succeeds and that the best reply is instead to reject epistemological individualism for epistemological communitarianism. According to communitarians, if an individual’s inherently testimonial beliefs amount at all to knowledge, it is only in a derivative sense – it is because they belong to a community whose shared evidence grounds knowledge that no individual member could possess independently.