{"id":945,"date":"2020-06-29T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T09:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/?p=945"},"modified":"2020-08-05T10:56:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T09:56:08","slug":"youshouldbelieveher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/youshouldbelieveher\/","title":{"rendered":"#YouShouldBelieveHer"},"content":{"rendered":"

We believe what other people tell us. I trust that you are on the way to the mall if you tell me you are on the way to the mall; I believe that the price of oil has gone down because I heard it on the news. In the summer I will go hiking in the Carpathians; I remember my geography teacher told us that wild life is gorgeous over there. And I believed him.
\n
\nUnless we have reason to be suspicious of them, we believe what other people tell us, and that\u2019s all right!!! We don\u2019t need to check on all <\/span><\/em>the facts ourselves; we can\u2019t do that anyway, we are physically and psychologically limited creatures. When is the last time you went to check the height of the tallest peak in the Carpathians yourself?<\/span><\/p>\n

We especially readily believe people \u2013 and, indeed, should <\/em><\/span>do so \u2013 when they have some sort of privileged access to the fact. Because they know best, for instance: I believe that you feel pain; after all, you know best how you feel. Because they were there when the event in question happened: I believe that you had eggs for breakfast this morning if you say so; after all, you were there when that happened. Because they\u2019re experts in the field: I believe my doctor when she says I have gastritis, she\u2019s a gastroenterologist, she would know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a mysterious phenomenon, though: we rarely go ahead and believe victims based on mere say-so. Although surely they know best \u2013 after all, they were there, and we weren\u2019t. Victims are experts in what happened to them: they have privileged access. However, we rarely take them at their word.<\/p>\n

When she says he sexually assaulted her, for instance, we usually suspend belief until further evidence presents itself. At best. Some of us even go ahead and suspect she\u2019s lying from the outset. But leaving those aside, even the most reasonable amongst us are, weirdly enough, perfectly willing to believe the victim when she says she had eggs for breakfast, but not when she says she was sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on? I conjecture that even the most reasonable amongst us are mistaken about the evidentiary profile of the case. I suspect, that is, that when my perfectly reasonable, feminist grandmother suspends belief about the testimony of a victim of sexual assault, she does so because she takes herself to be rationally compelled to do so given the evidence she\u2019s got. Or so I hope.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how I think my grandmother and all other reasonable folk like her think about these issues: the woman said he did it; the guy said he did not; I wasn\u2019t there to see it happen with my own eyes; therefore, I have equally weighty evidence in favour of the claim of sexual assault and against it; therefore, I should suspend belief until I get more evidence.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s what my grandmother thinks, she\u2019s wrong. Blamelessly so \u2013 researchers in theory of knowledge don\u2019t always fancy doing publicly engaged philosophy, so they haven\u2019t done much to teach my grandma otherwise; but she\u2019s wrong. And we should teach her to do better.<\/p>\n

To get one thing out of the way: the reason why my grandma suspends belief cannot be because a lot is at stake. My grandma is not a judge: \u2018innocent until proven guilty\u2019 is not the right standard for belief here. To see why, note that my grandma\u2019s belief, as opposed to the judge\u2019s belief, is not very likely to trigger a conviction. Nothing hinges for him, the alleged aggressor, on whether my grandma believes he did it or not.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a wee bit of support for a belief default reaction in recent years: the wonderful #Ibelieveher movement is one notable example. And there have been a couple of rationales that have been circulated in the public sphere in support of belief as the default reaction to victim testimony. One such rationale is grounded on moral considerations: the victim, research shows, is harmed further by disbelief. As such, the thought goes, although we\u2019re in a perfectly balanced evidentiary situation, moral considerations suggest we should start by believing her. That\u2019s a good thought. However, one could worry that moral reasons are only good reasons to express <\/span><\/em>belief in this case – in order to avoid further harm to the victim \u2013 but not to actually believe. After, all, it looks as though we can\u2019t really believe at will, against the evidence: if I see that there\u2019s a computer in front of me while I write this paper, no moral reasons are going to be strong enough to make me believe otherwise.<\/p>\n

Another, more evidentiary grounded rationale relies on the overwhelming statistics (Lisak et al., 2010<\/a>): studies consistently report a minuscule prevalence of false allegations of sexual assault (5.9%). Furthermore, false allegations are usually correlated with a history of either mental illness or crime on the alleged victim\u2019s side. This suggests, the argument goes, that, absent such indicators, we have excellent statistical evidence in favour of believing the victims. The worry for this line of reasoning is that high probabilities alone cannot generate knowledge, and that we should not believe what we don\u2019t know to be true: after all, I can\u2019t know that my lottery ticket will not win, no matter how high the probability. If I could, it would be rational for me to just throw it out before the draw even happens. But it\u2019s not. Similarly, the thought goes, we cannot know that he did it based on the mere high probability that he did. So I shouldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing, though: moral and statistical reasons, while good to have in support of the case for belief as the default rational position to take in the face of victim testimony, are not needed. And that\u2019s because, against my grandma\u2019s epistemological assessment, the evidentiary situation is not balanced in cases of victim testimony.<\/p>\n

Here is why, in a nutshell: all else being equal, we have good reason to believe he\u2019s lying; after all, whether he did it or not, we know it\u2019s in his interest to say that he did not. If so, as epistemologists put it, the evidence provided by his testimony is, at least to some extent, defeated: we have some reason against believing him. In contrast, we know she has very little reason to lie: (unless we know otherwise, of course), she doesn\u2019t stand to gain anything from making these allegations. To the contrary, if anything, she stands to lose from coming forward and testifying, in terms of reputation, but also in terms of the sheer harm that others\u2019 disbelief is bound to cause her. It is unsurprising, in the light of this, that more than 60% (Rennison, 2002<\/a>) of cases of sexual assault go unreported. Given all this, i.e. all the reasons she has to keep quiet, when she does come forward, her testimony, as opposed to his, is not affected by defeat.<\/p>\n

We have reasons against believing him: he\u2019s interested in lying. We have no reasons against believing her: if anything, she\u2019s interested in keeping quiet. That is the default evidentiary situation in cases sexual assault allegations. That\u2019s why my grandma is wrong: the evidentiary picture is hardly balanced. She should not suspend belief: she should believe her. And that\u2019s not because of moral reasons or on mere statistical grounds: that\u2019s just because it\u2019s the rational thing to do, given the evidence.<\/p>\n

One last thing before I close: in two thousand years of history of philosophy, philosophers haven\u2019t agreed on much; indeed, when presented with its history, one could reasonably think disagreement is the very raison d\u2019etre <\/span><\/em>of the profession. Here is one bit of curios data though: what I said above trivially follows on both main competing views in the epistemology of testimony.<\/p>\n

According to Testimonial Reductionism, one is justified in believing based on someone else\u2019s say-so just in case one either has evidence that testimony is a generally reliable source of knowledge, or else, evidence that the particular testifier at stake is reliable. Testimonial Anti-Reductionism disagrees: the default position, absent defeat, in cases of testimony, is belief. It is easy to see that, although disagreeing profoundly otherwise, both views agree about the correct verdict in the case of sexual assault allegations. On Anti-Reductionism, since we have no reason to believe she\u2019s lying, but we do have reasons to believe he is, we should go ahead and believe her. According to Reductionism, since we have evidence that victim testimony is extremely reliable, and, on top of this, we also have reason to think this particular testifier is telling the truth \u2013 after all, she\u2019s testifying against her own best interest \u2013 we should go ahead and believe her.<\/p>\n

Hear, hear!!! for the first ever consensus in philosophy: now all we have to do is get better at telling my grandma about our results.<\/p>\n

Picture by Luke Harold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We believe what other people tell us. I trust that you are on the way to the mall if you tell me you are on the way to the mall; […]","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#YouShouldBelieveHer, a new post by Mona Simion on victim testimony on Open For Debate","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[93,238],"custom_author":[237],"class_list":["post-945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-for-debate","tag-testimony","tag-victim","custom_author-simion-mona"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8KPlM-ff","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":531,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/bullshit-you-can-believe-in\/","url_meta":{"origin":945,"position":0},"title":"Bullshit You Can Believe In","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"November 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. So begins Harry Frankfurt\u2019s rightly celebrated essay On Bullshit, raising the important questions of precisely what bullshit is and why there is so much of it around. That sentence is particularly poignant now, three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Open for Debate"","block_context":{"text":"Open for Debate","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/category\/open-for-debate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/11\/140521-F-LR006-054.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/11\/140521-F-LR006-054.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/11\/140521-F-LR006-054.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/11\/140521-F-LR006-054.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":717,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/do-we-have-the-will-to-change-what-we-believe\/","url_meta":{"origin":945,"position":1},"title":"Do we have the will to change what we believe?","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"August 12, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A tweet made it to the United States\u2019 front page of Reddit.com on July 21st 2019 from the subreddit, r\/GetMotivated. 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The tweet expresses something intuitively true: what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Open for Debate"","block_context":{"text":"Open for Debate","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/category\/open-for-debate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2019\/07\/MichaelMiralflor3.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1149,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/the-ethics-of-belief-its-not-just-trump-supporters-who-believe-wrongly-its-all-of-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":945,"position":2},"title":"The Ethics of Belief: It\u2019s not just Trump supporters who believe wrongly\u2014it\u2019s all of us","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"March 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"As the dust settles on the Trump presidency, we are left to reflect on its many themes. One of its most fundamental was this: believing without adequate evidence. 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