Intellectual Self-Reliance
How is it possible that each person's own faculties are more trustworthy than the faculties of any other person?
This quote is from Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief, by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski.
Autonomy in the epistemic domain is generally equated with epistemic self-reliance. The intellectually autonomous person has no need for authority. She may take a belief on the word of another person, but she is free not to do so. There is no rational claim on her arising from another person's authority . . .
The rejection of epistemic authority presumably follows from the self-reliant person's reluctance to get beliefs from others. The rejection of authority also follows from egalitarianism since if everyone has the same epistemic powers, then nobody has the superiority needed for epistemic authority. But it is interesting that there is tension between self-reliance and egalitarianism. If the powers of other persons are equal to mine, on what grounds can I be more skeptical of beliefs obtained from them than from myself?
And more from Epistemic Authority:
The idea that one should treat other persons as less trustworthy than oneself occurs repeatedly in modern philosophy, although often without argument.* In the practical domain it is reflected in the common aphorism that if you want something done right, do it yourself. The epistemic version of that view is that if you want to make sure your question is answered correctly, find out the answer yourself. This way of thinking has an intuitive attraction, but it is hard to make sense out of it. How is it possible that each person's own faculties are more trustworthy than the faculties of any other person? Should those other persons rely upon themselves or upon her? There is, of course, a class of beliefs about which each person has first-person privilege: beliefs about one's own mental states. Presumably, each person is a more trustworthy source of beliefs in that category than any other person, but that is a special case. It is not the one relevant to the claim that getting beliefs on one's own is more trustworthy than getting beliefs from others. Very few of my beliefs are or reduce to beliefs for which I have a special privilege.
* [Author footnote]: An example from Rousseau: "We would seek the truth . . . in sincerity, we must lay no stress on the place or circumstance of our birth, nor on the authority of fathers and teachers; but appeal to the dictates of reason and conscience concerning every thing that is taught us in our youth." The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, par. 133 (2009).
