Unit 4 set texts and key concepts: VCE Philosophy

What this dot point is asking

Unit 4 is about the interpersonal side of belief: how we form beliefs, what justifies them, how far we rely on others, and what we owe each other as believers. You need the concepts, the set texts and the way they connect.

The set texts

For Unit 4 the VCAA prescribes these texts, in the form of extracts for most of them:

• W. K. Clifford, 'The Ethics of Belief' (1877)
• Elizabeth Fricker, 'Testimony and Epistemic Autonomy' (2006)
• Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2009)
• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (extract near the end of the chapter on freedom of thought and discussion)
• C. Thi Nguyen, 'Escape the Echo Chamber', Aeon (2018)
• Charles Sanders Peirce, 'The Fixation of Belief' (1877), Part V

Check the VCAA document for your year for the editions and exact extracts. Section A Question 4 is based on an extract from one of the Unit 4 set texts, but the exam also has an unseen stimulus (Section A Question 3, from Unit 3) and Section B essays that draw on a case study you have studied. You cannot predict which extract will appear, and all the key knowledge and skills in Units 3 and 4 are examinable.

The concepts

• Belief: taking something to be true. Beliefs can be held on good or poor grounds.
• Knowledge: commonly treated as true, justified belief, though how to understand justification is contested.
• Justification: the reasons or grounds that make a belief reasonable.
• Experience and perception: what we observe directly, which can be mistaken or biased.
• Reason and intuition: reasoning from premises, and immediate seemings or hunches.
• Testimony: accepting something because someone tells us.
• Expertise and authority: the claim to know more in a domain, and the standing to be believed or obeyed. Not the same: an authority may not be an expert.
• Trust: relying on another to speak truly and competently.
• Consensus: broad agreement, which can be evidence but is not proof.
• Fact, truth and falsity: what is the case, as opposed to what is merely believed.
• Peer disagreement: disagreement between people who are equally informed and capable.
• Epistemic injustice: a wrong done to someone in their capacity as a knower, such as discounting their word because of prejudice.
• Epistemic community: a group that shares, tests and passes on beliefs.
• Influence and perspective: how others and our standpoint shape what we believe.

How the pieces connect

• Experience, testimony and expertise are sources of belief (question 1). Peirce and Clifford discuss how beliefs should be formed.
• Responsibilities (question 2): Clifford argues we have strict duties about evidence, and Mill argues about the value of open discussion.
• Trust (question 3): E. Fricker on when to accept what others say, M. Fricker on how prejudice distorts trust.
• Disagreement (question 4): Mill on the value of opposing views, Nguyen on how some communities shut out disagreement.

Using a connection

Example: Clifford argues that believing on insufficient evidence is wrong, because beliefs affect action and the common stock of belief. This links to Nguyen: an echo chamber is a social structure that lets members hold beliefs insulated from outside evidence. Clifford provides the standard, Nguyen shows how a group can undermine it.

Practice questions

1. Distinguish an expert from an authority.

   Model answer: An expert has superior knowledge or skill in a domain. An authority has standing, often institutional, to have their word accepted or followed. A person can be an authority without being an expert, as with an official, or an expert without authority, as with an unrecognised specialist.

2. State how Peirce and Clifford might agree about belief.

   Model answer: Both think the way we fix beliefs matters, and neither is satisfied with holding beliefs by habit or desire. Clifford says we need sufficient evidence, Peirce says the scientific method is the one that corrects itself against external reality.