Positive Reasons, Defeaters, and the Infant/Child Objection
Positive Reasons, Defeaters, and the Infant/Child Objection
This chapter is devoted to defending dualism from an objection that is often regarded by non-reductionists as decisive against requiring positive reasons for testimonial justification or warrant: namely, the apparent fact that infants and young children are not cognitively capable of having such positive reasons, yet clearly possess testimonial knowledge. Since non-reductionism does not impose a requirement of this sort, it is thought to avoid this problem and is therefore taken to have a significant advantage over both dualism and reductionism. It is argued that if this ‘Infant/Child Objection’ indeed undermines dualism and reductionism, then a variant of it similarly undermines non-reductionism. Thus, considerations about the cognitive capacities of infants and young children do not effectively discriminate between these three competing theories of testimonial justification or warrant.
Keywords: children, cognitive capacities, dualism, infants, justification, non-reductionism, reductionism, testimony, warrant
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