Search

Rachel Reeves's March 2024 Mais lecture was an exercise in tempering hope that Britain's threadbare public services would soon be restored to health. The message of restraint might prove to be early confirmation of Reeves's instinctive governing philosophy, but it also reflected the fact that she was called upon to speak in a context of epistemic injustice. Senior Labour politicians must always accept greater scrutiny of their fiscal policy pronouncements than their Conservative counterparts. Their statements are also susceptible to disinformation, such that what Labour's opponents insist its frontbench team are hiding from the electorate often gets treated as a more authentic account of its plans than anything Labour says for itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that one is likely to accept what a speaker says when the expected utility of accepting their testimony is greater than the expected utility of continuing inquiry. One virtue of our hypothesis is that it allows us to explain why confidence in experts has declined in recent years. In a traditional media landscape expert testimony is easy to find, and alternative sources of information are relatively costly to access. Hence, practical considerations largely favour accepting expert testimony. But on social media, alternative information is easy to find, and it is often practically rational to accept this information rather than to search for (and identify) genuinely expert testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Misinformation in various guises has become a significant concern in contemporary society and it has been implicated in several high-impact political events over the past years, including Brexit, the 2016 American elections, and bungled policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in some countries. In this paper, I draw on resources from contemporary social epistemology to clarify why and how misinformation is epistemically bad. I argue that its negative effects extend far beyond the obvious ones of duping individuals with false or misleading beliefs. Misinformation has systemic effects on our information environments, making all of us worse off, including the epistemically vigilant. This paper does not offer measures or policies to fight misinformation, but aims to contribute to the prior goal of better understanding what's bad about misinformation. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for ameliorative projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper constructs a semi-formal language suited to the analysis of Wigner’s Friend scenarios: it represents an epistemic notion of rational beliefs and perspectives, to accommodate the insights of perspectival interpretations of quantum mechanics. The language is then used to analyze a paradox put forward by Frauchiger and Renner (Nat Commun, 9(1):3711, 2018). Their argument is presented as a semi-formal derivation with specified rules of reasoning. These rules bear an affinity to some of the cherished tenets of epistemology and we argue that they are valid (one universally, and the other in experimental contexts). Since our proof is a reductio, it leaves a choice which premises are responsible for a contradiction. Our first choice is a step that appears incorrect from the point of view of the universal unitary evolution as well as the view that every measurement induces a collapse of a measured system’s state. Our second choice, brought to view by the paper’s attention to perspectives and epistemology, points to a step reporting the transmission of beliefs (testimony) about measurement results. We argue that testimony is not licensed by quantum mechanical formalism; we discuss some recent attempts to save the cogency of testimony in the context of quantum measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children develop naïve theories, which often contain misconceptions, spontaneously before formal education. Testimony from others plays a crucial role in revising their initial false beliefs. Understanding the development of children's naïve theories and the factors influencing children's naïve belief revision is of great importance. The present study examined belief revision in three-to-five-year-old children (N = 90) when exposed to scientific testimonies from their mothers that contradicted their naïve physical beliefs. Three object motion tasks, including gravitational motion, horizontal projectile motion and free-falling motion, were employed. Results showed that children of different ages held different levels of initial beliefs across different concepts. Scientific testimony from mothers facilitated children's belief revision, and the belief revision is different across physical concepts and age. These findings emphasize the importance of testimony in science education and highlight the significance of considering the impact of different concepts on children's science learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book Prejudice, Endre Begby argues that people who hold paradigmatically prejudiced beliefs – for example, the belief that women are less adept at math than men – might be fully rational in holding those beliefs. In this article, I argue that Begby fails to provide compelling examples of beliefs that are both rational and prejudiced. On Begby's account, whether a belief is prejudiced is determined by its content: it follows that any two token beliefs with the same content will either both be prejudiced, or both unprejudiced, regardless of how they differ in other respects. I sketch an alternative account, on which whether a person's belief counts as prejudiced might be sensitive to a greater range of factors. I then turn to Bebgy's discussion of 'evidential preemption,' a phenomenon by which certain speech acts seem to inoculate themselves from having their contents disconfirmed or falsified by later counterevidence. I argue for skepticism about evidential preemption. To the extent that there is a genuine normative phenomenon in the neighborhood, it is the familiar one of testimonial defeat, in which testimony from one source is neutralized by conflicting testimony from another source that one has reason to think is more reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite religion's deep historical roots, adults in modern societies express greater confidence in the existence of unobservable scientific entities, like oxygen, as compared to unobservable religious entities, like God. Challenging conventional explanations, we argue that testimony-based input, rather than direct experience, is the primary determinant of individuals' ontological beliefs in both science and religion. Disparities in ontological beliefs between the domains of science and religion, within each domain, and across diverse cultures are poorly explained by variation in direct experience. From early childhood, humans rely heavily on testimony to form and calibrate their beliefs. The credibility of testimony emerges as a key factor in understanding the nuanced dynamics of ontological beliefs in both scientific and religious domains. Understanding why individuals are more confident of the existence of invisible scientific phenomena (e.g., oxygen) than invisible religious phenomena (e.g., God) remains a puzzle. Departing from conventional explanations linking ontological beliefs to direct experience, we introduce a model positing that testimony predominantly shapes beliefs in both scientific and religious domains. Distinguishing direct experience (personal observation) from cultural input (testimony-based evidence), we argue that even apparently direct experiences often stem from others' testimony. Our analysis indicates that variability in direct experience cannot explain belief disparities between science and religion, within each domain, or across cultures. Instead, variability in testimony is the primary driver of ontological beliefs. We present developmental evidence for testimony-based beliefs and elucidate the mechanisms underlying their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional approach to the verification of testimony at the crime scene has currently become, to a large extent, detached from the requirements of judicial practice, not reflecting the contemporary possibilities of the technical progress and remaining isolated in certain traditional forms of implementation. Likewise, along with criminal prosecution situations specific for the activity of investigation of criminal deeds, new doctrines and fields of knowledge are continuously being consolidated, such as: forensic reconstruction, tactical operations, etc. Besides, these doctrines and areas of knowledge undoubtedly influence the tactics of verification of testimony at the crime scene. The traditional approach to the procedures for verifying testimony at the crime scene no longer allows us to fully reveal the essence of this criminal prosecution action. However, a complex analysis of the current condition of the verification of testimony at the crime scene from the positions of the criminal procedure law, forensics, forensic psychology, computer science, etc. is necessary. The foregoing justifies the selection and topicality of the study, including the relevance of the further development of a various spectrum of aspects related to the use of verification of testimony at the crime scene as an effective means of establishing the truth in criminal cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Humanities & Educational Sciences Journal is the property of Humanities & Educational Sciences Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I seek to analyze the narrative construction of the reporter's book A Vida Nunca Mais Será a Mesma (Life Will Never Be the Same Again, 2021), which tells stories of sexual violence against women and also features the first-person account of the author herself, Adriana Negreiros. I try to understand (a) how journalistic fundamentals such as precision and objectivity are articulated/tensioned with lacunar and fragmentary traces of testimony; and (b) how adopting a feminist/gendered perspective on journalistic narrative can bring to light traumatic female experiences that, throughout history, have been placed in the background. To do this, I examine the book and an interview conducted with the author in 2023, concluding that a feminist approach to journalism and testimony can open up affective spaces for women's stories to be told. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to explore the political act of transmitting victimhood and trauma into theatrical activism, thereby turning it into a tool to fight against the psycho-social consequences of post-9/11 terror. Kathryn Blume, a contemporary American feminist theatre activist, attains this through the use of testimonies incorporated into the plays as extended monologues of dissent. Her theatrical movement, 'The Lysistrata Project', and plays, most of which are verbatim testimonials, especially The Boycott (2007) and The Accidental Activist (2003), act as sites of resistance against American sociopolitical, cultural and environmental issues concerning the current global conflict after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores power relations in gathering Holocaust survivor life stories. Through the case study of Slovakian Jewish survivor, Vera Karoly, it asks whether her testimony was given or taken. Using Hank Greenspan’s work as its inspiration, it contemplates the various forms of testimony and cultural production that were produced relating to Vera. The author himself is part of that process and it includes a reflexive approach to how he confronted the Holocaust. The ethical issues raised when a Holocaust survivor is reluctant to give testimony are to the fore, analyzing in this case how it led to a form of counter-memorial to the (im)possibility of speaking about the Shoah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do stories of loss sound like 70 years after the Holocaust and how are they remembered in the places where the losses themselves occurred? When Steven Hopman returned to Poland in 2010, as part of the March of the Living’s (MOL) Montreal contingent of survivors tasked with educating students about the Holocaust, he grappled with how best to narrate a coherent and shareable story. This article shares his struggle to go public with the ‘salvaged remnants’ of his experiences while detailing the strategies he employed to describe what was beyond loss and could not be shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Hank Greenspan has provided essential insights for rethinking foundational conceptions and methods of collecting interviews with Holocaust survivors. As Greenspan urges us to consider, not all interviews are alike and there are those that entail sustained and intimate interpersonal connections, often developed over several years between ‘partners in a conversation.’ Greenspan’s emphasis on interviewers and survivors ‘learning together’ underscores the contingent, emotionally intimate, and collaborative aspects of the interview process that are often kept at the margins by Holocaust testimony archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Yolande Mukagasana and Semezdin Mehmedinović's highly aestheticised testimonial writing about the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and the Bosnian War. My analysis of Mukagasana's Not My Time to Die and Mehmedinović's Sarajevo Blues opens up a rich comparison that demonstrates the problematic nature of a social expectation and assumption that a survivor is active and strong in contrast to a passive and helpless victim. To unpack complexity of these categorisations, this article asks two questions: How do these two testimonies portray those who outlived violence and died as a result of it? What do these narratives tell us about the labels of a victim and survivor? After discussing the meaning of a victim and survivor in scholarship and local contexts, I will trace ways in which Mukagasana and Mehmedinović's writing balances expressions of agency and recognition of the uncontrollable. The discussion will also examine actions that may appear less valuable or less visible than others and the implications of depiction of victims as active agents. The comparative analysis of the two literary texts complicates the categories of a victim and survivor, challenging the distance between the reader and those who outlived genocide or war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a collection of eyewitness accounts by survivors of Nazi persecution gathered in the mid-1950s by the Wiener Library in London, narratives that were elicited about lived experiences of railway transport and trauma, as well as the implication of railway personnel and structures in resistance activities. The accounts provide an opportunity to interrogate early postwar narratives that reveal emerging constructions of refugee identity, agency, and survival through key memories deemed particularly "valuable" to the Library, an institution created by Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution. Through a case study approach framed by Ketelaar's distinction between archivalisation and archivisation, this paper argues that narratives of trauma, displacement and resistance associated with deportation by train were of special interest to Library staff already in the 1950s. This is striking due to a lack of scholarly focus on these themes until decades later. The recent publication of the collection as a digital resource has the potential to further expand and recontextualise "tacit narratives" of transport embedded in the collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Belügyi Szemle / Academic Journal of Internal Affairs is the property of Ministry of Interior of Hungary and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Testimony is a source of knowledge. A speaker asserts what a hearer may therefore come to know. Assertion has widely been treated as the exclusive or at least the paradigmatic vehicle for testimony. I argue that we testify not only by asserting something, but also by taking something for granted within some other utterance. In philosophy of language, this is called semantic presupposition. The very reasons leading theorists of testimony have for thinking that assertion can be testimony are equally reasons for thinking semantic presupposition can be testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I seek to analyze the narrative construction of the reporter’s book A Vida Nunca Mais Será a Mesma (Life Will Never Be the Same Again, 2021), which tells stories of sexual violence against women and also features the first-person account of the author herself, Adriana Negreiros. I try to understand (a) how journalistic fundamentals such as precision and objectivity are articulated/tensioned with lacunar and fragmentary traces of testimony; and (b) how adopting a feminist/gendered perspective on journalistic narrative can bring to light traumatic female experiences that, throughout history, have been placed in the background. To do this, I examine the book and an interview conducted with the author in 2023, concluding that a feminist approach to journalism and testimony can open up affective spaces for women’s stories to be told.

Purpose: There is little to no empirical research on the phenomenon of ways in which the racism of whiteness transpires within the faculties and classrooms of US-based ALA-accredited library and information science (LIS) education programs. We do have scholars publishing meaningful work exploring diversity-equity-inclusion topics and initiatives to evolve the LIS discourse on these issues (Honma, 2005; Chancellor, 2019; De LaRosa et al., 2021; Gibson, 2019; Mehra et al., 2023; Colón-Aguirre et al., 2022; Hands, 2022). This research substantiates the conceptual research that exists by empirically exposing the ways in which the racism of whiteness functions at the interpersonal level of work culture in LIS programs (i.e. the academy) in the US. Design/methodology/approach: Adapting Baima and Sude's (2020) modified Delphi Method, a focus group of 13 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) library and information science faculty members in the United States were recruited to participate in a one-time 60-min virtual Zoom session. Participants were engaged in three iterative rounds of reflective inquiry to reach a consensus of experience. The study design was embedded with critical race theory-based (CRT) ethnographic methods such as testimony (counterstorytelling), collective affirmation (shared narratives), and silence. Findings: BIPOC LIS faculty (tenure-track and tenured) have similar ideas about whiteness and how it is operationalized as micro- and macro-aggressions in the LIS academic workplace, most significantly inside the classroom. The experience of whiteness was prevalent among all study participants in two areas: workplace meetings with faculty colleagues and classroom sessions (face-to-face and online) with students. Originality/value: The findings offer empirical evidence to support the prolific conceptual literature in LIS discourse concerning ways in which critical race theory (CRT) interrogates LIS's socio-professional injustices and inequities (e.g. Gibson et al., 2018; Stauffer, 2020; Leung and Lopez-McKnight, 2021; Jennings and Kinzer, 2022; Snow and Dunbar, 2022). There remains a dearth of empirical research that reports how whiteness is reproduced in the practices, knowledge, and resources that make up the ethos of the LIS faculty meeting and classroom. Documenting the testimonies of BIPOC LIS faculty solidifies the existence of whiteness as a toxic reality in the LIS academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the occasion of the collection of archive material for the drafting of the monograph A. Esposito, G. Leoni, Fernando Távora. Opera completa (Milan: Electa, 2005), I, at the time a member of the research group, was the direct recipient – during long sessions in his studio in Rua do Aleixo in Porto – of Fernando Távora’s verbal reading of his Diario di bordo, the result of the ‘round-the-world voyage’ he undertook in 1960 thanks to a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. The re-reading was accompanied by the author’s comments and the recordings of these sessions are now deposited in the Archive of the Marques da Silva Foundation in Porto (AFIMS). A scholarship at the Gulbenkian Foundation in 2012 then allowed me to elaborate a first translation into Italian and an initial notation of the Diary, which flowed into the critical Italian edition published in 2022 (F. Távora, Diario di bordo, edited by A. Esposito, G. Leoni, R. Maddaluno, Siracusa: Letteraventidue 2023). In the course of this work, which spans over twenty years, the writer has had the opportunity not only to reflect on the central role of the journey in Távora’s work, but also to discuss this theme with friends and colleagues of the Portuguese master, fellow travelers or witnesses of the accounts that Távora made part of both his teaching and his project activity. The following text provides both reflections elaborated over time and a summary of the conversations held.

One proposed solution to address the validity of mystical experiences for non-mystics is to emphasize their frequency (tawatur). This approach suggests that certain mystical claims can be considered valid due to multiple reports from different mystics. This solution, which has been considered in Mulla Sadra's philosophy after Suhrawardi, can be seen as one of the best approaches in addressing the mentioned issue. However, even in recent research in the field of philosophy of mysticism and religion, the details of this solution have not been fully investigated. This article aims to logically formulate and elaborate on this solution using an analytical-descriptive approach, discussing key components, assumptions, and challenges. The necessary steps to achieve this goal can be outlined in six stages: first, examining the inherent validity of mystical experiences for the mystic themselves; second, establishing the possibility of sharing in mystical experiences; third, proving the occurrence of this sharing through the existence of an effective cause and the absence of obstacles; fourth, demonstrating the frequency (tawatur) of mystical experiences with necessary and sufficient conditions; fifth, discussing the authenticity and validity of tawatur; and finally, demonstrating the effectiveness of authentic tawatur in solving the problem of generalizing mystical experiences. In conclusion, if the claim of tawatur in a mystical experience successfully passes through these stages, it can be considered valid for non-mystics as well.

The article is devoted to the participation of witnesses in the investigation of crimes committed by minors and the formulation of the leading tasks to be solved through the realization of the possibilities of the institution of witness testimony. In the practice of investigating crimes committed by minors, certain difficulties arise in assessing testimony from the point of view of completeness and objectivity. Attention to considering the possibilities of enhancing the credibility of witness testimony is based on a particular role for this activity in crime prevention. The purpose of the article is to consider the types of witnesses involved in the investigation of crimes committed by minors through the prism of their role in fulfilling the educational and preventive function. Research methods: dialectical, comparative, logical, analysis and synthesis to test the hypothesis regarding the special role of witness testimony in the investigation of juvenile crimes. The result of the study include the determination of the possibility of obtaining criminalistically relevant information through witness examination. The article reviews the issues of implementation of the educational role of interrogation in the process of detection and investigation of crime s.

With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba experienced an unprecedented crisis. This period, officially designated by the euphemism «Special Period», was experienced as a cataclysm by the population. The writers of the island took literary ownership of this apocalypse while the official organs refused to evoke it. The works of the 1990s become the few testimonies of this daily nothingness. By challenging the revolutionary identity, they contribute to forge the collective memory of the radical changes that reshaped the Cuban society.

Dorfman’s La muerte y la doncella illustrates a Chilean socio-political problem, that of a country in the process of rebuilding after the dictatorship, but whose testimonies are missing or prevented. Dorfman highlights the need to remember through the portrayal of three characters who disagree about the need for testimony, whether to share it or not. He underlines the ghostly state of the victim, and hence of the country, by justifying his malaise by the impossibility of communicating and testifying about his traumas. He thus questions the indefectible link between memory and identity, between speaking out and self-existence.

This paper addresses the use of oral history sources in my practice of documentary filmmaking as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. It examines how the filmic documentation of oral history sources can reflect aspects of testimony, memory, and postmemory, as they are theorized in the field of Holocaust Studies. In my film “Past Forward: Journeys to Transnistria,” I document the challenge of relating an intergenerational and cross-cultural story while preserving historical accuracy. Filmed in Ukraine in 2002, it tells the story of my mother, a child-survivor of the Romanian Holocaust. Through oral testimony, the film captures my mother’s survival story as she tells it to me and later to her granddaughter who documents it for a history school project. It then retraces my mother’s journey between 1941 and 1944 from her hometown of Dorohoi, Romania to Transnistria as it was called then under German-allied Romanian occupation. Survivor’s testimony combined with onsite witness interviews, and an archival military map, were used to trace the story of a little Jewish Romanian girl who survived the journey to Transnistria. Recently available archival sources have further validated her story. It has also contributed to locating the film within the broader context of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Research has shown that by age 5–6 years, children fully integrate information about agents' mental states into their verbal moral judgments: When asked to say whether an agent is morally good or bad, they rely on the agent's intentions more than on its action's outcomes. Research has also shown that from an early age, children use a plethora of social and moral cues when deciding whom to trust in learning and testimony situations. Here, for the first time, we asked if and how children's trust in informants who relay information about the moral character of a novel agent is influenced by the valence of the intentions underlying the informants' prior actions. Italian children aged 6 to 10 years (n = 219, 112 female) were first presented with two puppets and asked to judge them. One puppet accidentally caused harm (neutral intention, negative outcome), the other attempted but failed to do so (negative intention, neutral outcome). Next, the puppets gave contrasting testimonies about whether a novel agent was good or bad. Findings revealed that the tendency to trust the assessment of the well-intentioned puppet concerning the novel agent emerged at age 8, whereas younger children simply showed to believe that the novel agent was good, regardless of the testimonies they received. These results suggest that despite the ability to generate intent-based moral judgments emerges at age 5–6, the tendency to rely on intentions underlying past actions of informants when assessing informants' testimonies about the moral character of a third party undergoes significant change in childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Testimonial evidence in the form of verbal accounts by victims, witnesses, and suspects plays a critical role in investigations and judicial proceedings, often serving as the only evidence during a trial. The psychological nature of testimonies causes this form of evidence to be inherently limited, motivating psycho-legal scholars to identify both risk factors and solutions necessary to improve its reliability. To this end, the current perspective argues that sleeprelated fatigue is a formative factor that influences the fidelity of statements and confessions provided during legal interactions. Specifically, it considers the prevalence of sleep disruption among subjects interacting with the criminal justice system, its likely impact onmemory of victims and witnesses, and the role of sleep deprivation in confessions. In view of legal doctrines relevant to both evidentiary and constitutional considerations, this analysis is meant to motivate future work at the intersection of sleep-related fatigue and legal processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posing the issue of fallacies, Aristotle tried to keep safe the discursive reason-one of the sources of knowledge- from likely errors. Likewise, John Greco wants, in fact, to determine the reliable framework of testimony-another source of knowledge-by introducing the garbage problem. To solve the problem, he tries to consider the garbage problem as a generality problem. In this way, the relevant parameters-which are determined by the practical concerns/tasks that form the epistemic community -warrant reliability by narrowing the transmission channels. We will recognize some deficiencies in his view taking an analytical and critical approach and a comprehensive look at his epistemology of testimony in general. Therefore, we indicate that a better formulation of the problem can be offered. We cannot ignore the two following difficulties though the difficulty of letting luck into knowledge and the difficulty of a partly person-oriented solution being somehow resolvable. First, Greco does not explain how practical concerns lead us to the right results. Second, it is not that the practical tasks and the relevant parameters are always known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly assumed that content preservation is required for success in testimonial exchanges. Many content internalists, however, cannot endorse this assumption. They must claim instead that testimonial exchanges can often succeed when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker's testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*. Goldberg (2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) argues that this internalist approach is epistemically problematic: it cannot maintain certain features thought to be characteristic of testimonial exchanges. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the internalist's account is just as epistemically respectable as the traditional 'same content' approach favoured by externalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the technology of memory as truth, based on the work carried out by the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition, created in Colombia within the framework of the Peace Agreements signed by the government and the FARC-EP guerrillas in 2016, utilizing the confessional dispositif proposed by Michel Foucault in the 1970s and 1980s. The study of confession and testimony is developed in three stages: 1. The mechanism for collecting testimonies in the volume Cuando los pájaros no cantaban will be analyzed. 2. The studies on confession and truth in Foucault's analyses will be revisited. 3. An articulation between memory and history based on testimonies is proposed. The article concludes with references to historical memory from the proposal of a testimonial technology, proposed from the confessional dispositif. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Public Justification Principle, legitimate laws must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Proponents of this principle assume that its satisfaction requires speakers to offer justifications that are representable as arguments that feature premises which reasonable listeners would accept. I develop the concept of dark knowledge to show that this assumption is false. Laws are often justified on the basis of premises that many reasonable listeners know, even though they would reject these premises on the basis of the further considerations that speakers implicitly rely on for their support. Accommodating the fact of dark knowledge requires us to consider the civic virtue of speakers to be more important for public justification than the acceptability of their arguments to reasonable citizens. I sketch an alternative conception of public justification that incorporates these results and argue that it provides a rationale for ignoring the otherwise sound contributions of some participants in political deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on anonymous survivor testimonies shared on the Everyone's Invited platform to analyse continuities and differences in experiences and perceptions of youth rape culture across generations. Findings suggest that while there are stubbornly consistent patterns of harm in experiences of rape culture over decades, there is hope to be found in distinct perceptions of rape culture between survivors of different ages. This occurs specifically in the way young people wield the discourses and conceptual resources of society's reckoning with sexual violence to situate their experiences in a broader structural and cultural landscape, in spite of ongoing and entrenched institutional failings. While the experience of rape culture as a phenomenon continues much as it did decades ago, the mobilization of 'rape culture' as a conceptual resource amongst young people is increasingly visible at our current conjuncture, and this visibility is facilitated partly via digital connectivity and the expansion of personal testimony campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to interact in a natural language profoundly changes devices' interfaces and potential applications of speaking technologies. Concurrently, this phenomenon challenges our mainstream theories of knowledge, such as how to analyze linguistic outputs of devices under existing anthropocentric theoretical assumptions. In section 1, I present the topic of machines that speak, connecting between Descartes and Generative AI. In section 2, I argue that accepted testimonial theories of knowledge and justification commonly reject the possibility that a speaking technological artifact can give testimony. In section 3, I identify three assumptions underlying the view that rejects conversational AIs – AI-based technologies that converse, as testifiers: conversational AIs (1) lack intentions, (2) cannot be normatively assessed, and (3) cannot constitute an object in trust relations, while humans can. In section 4, I propose the concept 'AI-testimony' for analyzing outputs of conversational AIs, suggesting three conditions for technologies to deliver AI-testimony: (1) content is propositional, (2) generated and delivered with no other human directly involved, (3) the output is perceived as phenomenologically similar to that of a human. I conclude that this concept overcomes the limitations of the anthropocentric concept of testimony, opening future directions of research without associating conversational AIs with human-like agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It may be hard to imagine how bullshit, or being strategically indifferent to the veracity of one's assertions, might ever be morally permissible. Yet to categorically denounce it is to find oneself burdened with defending the impossibility of justifiable bullshit, the indefeasibility of truthfulness and the inculpability of inveterate bullshitters. A much more tenable position is to expand one's notion of bullshit to include unintentional indifference to veracity while also characterizing bullshit (whether strategic or unintentional) as wrong only when it constitutes negligence. Once bullshit is redefined in this fashion it becomes apparent that its preponderance in contemporary society is the work not of those who bullshit intentionally, but of those who uncritically consume and transmit the bullshit of others. Any attempt to disrupt the spread of negligent bullshit thus does well to consider our epistemic obligations not only as perceived experts, but as listeners. It is in this respect that the early Indian Buddhist critique of testimony proves quite helpful in reducing gullibility and, thereby, the likelihood of unintentional, yet negligent, bullshit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tropelías: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada is the property of Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While positive appraisals of testimonial knowledge by Enlightenment thinkers have recently begun to receive more attention, such discussions often operate at a very general level, leaving out much of the context and dynamics of specific types of testimonial interactions. Drawing on extended passages from Georg Friedrich Meier and Immanuel Kant, the present paper looks at the specific case of scholarly testimony and the various epistemic dangers that can befall the interaction between scholars (or, in modern parlance, ‘experts’) and lay audiences. While Kant recognises the imperfections of many expert testifiers (and pays special attention to the figure of the ‘pedant’), he is keenly aware of the – greater – risk of what may be called ‘epistemic populism’, which seeks ‘to make imperceptible the blatantly obvious inequality between loquacious ignorance and thorough science’ (AA, XI, 141). Furthermore, Kant suggests, those with superior epistemic authority can justifiably disengage from interactions with those who, as laypersons, arrogate to themselves equal epistemic standing and are unwilling to appreciate the rational force of evidence and argumentation. Prolonging interaction in such a scenario would be futile and may well be ‘contrary to the dignity of reason’ (AA, XI, 143). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the four books of memoirs by Esther Tusquets: Confesiones de una editora poco mentirosa (2005), Habíamos ganado la guerra (2007), Confesiones de una vieja dama indigna (2009), and Tiempos que fueron (2012). The initial premise of this research posits that, in recounting her personal experience, the author not only reveals intimate aspects of herself but also constructs a cultural narrative. To unravel the complexity inherent in this duality, three areas fundamental to autobiographical writing are explored: the configuration of identity through the narrative dimension of the text, the fictionality intrinsic to the genre, and the underlying testimonial intention of the author. The analysis shows that, although Tusquets writes these memoirs from a deeply subjective perspective, by contextualising them within a range of geographical, social, cultural, and political circumstances, she produces a dual cultural narative. Thus in the course of documenting the construction of Lumen’s catalogue through a series of definitive milestones, she also furnishes a valuable testimony to what the publishing field in Spain was like between the late Franco era and the 1990s when the great international conglomerates began to erect insurmountable barriers to the work of independent publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Islamic judicial law, The position of women in the context of witness testimony varies. While the testimony of women in criminal cases was rejected in the nisab division, where the nature of the case was important, their testimony was accepted as valid under certain conditions in civil cases. When they are required to testify in economic transactions, the testimony of two women is requested against one man, and the role of one of the two women is explained as the 'performance of the duty of reminding'. This has led to the entrenched belief in the literature that women are positioned this way in matters of testimony because they are considered relatively weaker in intellectual capabilities compared to men. According to the findings of the science of psychology, women are considered superior to men in matters such as memory and mastery of details. However, their association with 'forgetfulness' in the context of their position in the matter of testimony suggests a problem with the scope of the reasoning of the evidence in Islamic law. The purpose of this study is to make a contribution suggesting that instead of narrowing the ruling solely to women's forgetfulness, it would be more accurate to address the issue within the broader meaning expressed by the text and taking into account the overall effects arising from women's emotions and biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on The Farming of Bones, Brother, I'm Dying, and the short story "Night Talkers" collected in The Dew Breaker, this article explores how Edwidge Danticat engages with the biopolitics of race in her writing. The biopolitics of race traumatizes people through racial discrimination, exclusion, and purification; in Danticat's works, this is manifested in atrocities inflicted on Haitian workers, the exclusion of asylum seekers, and the deportation of Haitian descendants. Those racially excluded people resist the destructive effects of state racism by creating testimonial narratives to record crimes and atrocities, or by establishing communities for mutual support. Through the dynamics of biopolitical oppression and resistance, Danticat empowers those precarious people and achieves her purpose of political writing: while dissolving the negative influence of biopolitics, she reconstructs individual subjectivities through testimony, and rebuilds fragmented identities through the solidarity of Haitian communities, in order to reaffirm the national identity of the Haitian people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores historical and literary aspects of Kareem Ketafa's novel The Spider's Siege. It provides a plot summary and situates the novel within its historical context of Anfal 8 campaign in the Bahdinan region of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the communist partisans joined thousands of fugitive villagers who climbed Mount Gara for refuge from the army and its use of chemical weapons. The article discusses the novelist's literary techniques and his use of literary devices. The structure of the novel, the article tries to demonstrate, is that of a web with parallel threads. The article also discusses the tension between narration and documentation which characterizes the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When deciding whether to trust someone's claims, how do children combine—over multiple interactions—information about that person's general behavioral tendencies (traits) with that person's ongoing (and changing) rate of providing accurate claims? Children aged 4–8 played 11 rounds of a find-the-sticker game. For each round, an informant looked into two cups and made a claim about which cup held a sticker. Children guessed the sticker's location and the sticker's actual location was revealed. Prior to the game, children received information that the informant was either honest or dishonest. In Study 1 (N = 201, 105 female, 96 male), the informant provided inaccurate information on the first five trials and then provided accurate information for the remaining trials (55% overall accuracy). In Study 2 (N = 144, 89 female, 55 male), the informant produced a less predictable pattern of (in)accuracy, but remained 55% accurate overall. The trait information children initially received about the informant's honesty strongly influenced their epistemic trust when they lacked additional information about the informant's reliability (the earliest trials). When children's first-hand experiences with the informant prevented them from making strong predictions about the informant's future behavior, only children approximately 7 years and older utilized trait information to guide their epistemic trust. These results demonstrate some similarities in children's causal reasoning about the physical world and their social reasoning. The results also demonstrate developmental patterns in how children weigh different types of social information at different junctures in social interaction. Public Significance Statement: When deciding whether to trust what someone told them, 4-year-olds relied on information about an informant's traits (honesty/dishonesty) when they had limited first-hand experience with that informant. By 7 years, children also relied on trait information when a person's future behavior was more nuanced or inconsistent with past behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Near East University Islamic Research Center / Yakın Doğu Üniversitesi İslam Tetkikleri Merkezi Dergisi is the property of Journal of Near East University Islamic Research Center and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Al-Anbar University for Islamic Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)