In part I of this paper, I argue that #MeToo testimony increases epistemic value for the survivor qua hearer when experiences like hers are represented by others; for society at large when false but dominant narratives about sexual violence and sexual harassment against women are challenged and replaced with true stories; and for the survivor qua teller when her true story is believed. In part II, I argue that the epistemic significance of #MeToo testimony compels us to consider the tremendous and often unappreciated costs to the individual tellers, and the increased credibility they are owed in virtue thereof.
This essay explores the epistemological significance of the kinds of beliefs that grow out of traumatic experiences, such as the rape survivor's belief that she is never safe. O n current theories of justification, beliefs like this one are generally dismissed due to either insufficient evidence or insufficient propositional content. Here, Freedman distinguishes two discrete sides of the aftermath of psychic trauma, the shattered self and the shattered worldview. This move enables us to see these beliefs as beliefs; in other words, us having cognitive content. Freedman argues that what we then need is a theory of justification that allows us to handpick reliable sources of information on sexual violence, and give credibility where deemed appropriate. She advances a mix of reliabilism and coherentism that privileges feminism. O n this account, the evidence for the class of beliefs in question will depend on un act of sexual violence (or testimony, or statistics) to the extent that the act is u reliable indication of the prevalence of sexual violence against women.What happens to our beliefs about the world after a traumatic experience, and are these traumatically informed beliefs justified? The sorts of beliefs that I have in mind, for example, are the rape survivor's belief that she is never safe or the child abuse survivor's belief that adults cannot be trusted. While my intuition is that, for these survivors, these beliefs and ones like them are justified, they do not fit comfortably within our mainstream theories of justification. As friends or partners of survivors of traumatic events we can show deep understanding of the consequences of terror and violence, indeed we show a certain compassion even in the absence of any personal connection to the survivor.' But as epistemologists we routinely dismiss traumatically informed beliefs as irrational, for one of two reasons. Either we dismiss the beliefs due to insufficient evidence
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A view of truth that gained prominence among early logical positivists, what A.J. Ayer called the ‘redundancy theory of truth,’ has had a renaissance over the last few decades. The fundamental thought behind this theory is that the truth predicate is a device of disquotation. Redundancy, or disquotationalism, is seen by its advocates as providing a definitive answer to the perennial question ‘what is the nature of truth?’ The answer, says the disquotationalist, is to reject the idea that truth has some underlying nature. The terms true and false, as Ayer put it, connote nothing (Ayer, 1936/1946,88). They do not correspond or refer to some elusive ingredient of reality. Truth, he argued, must be deflated from its exalted metaphysical Status — but the notion should not be dispensed with altogether. Disquotationalists like Ayer think that the truth predicate has an essential role to play in logic. Indeed, disquotationalism, in its purest form, sees the sole function of the truth predicate as fulfilling this logical need, that is, as a device that aids generalization by permitting infinite conjunction and disjunction.
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