A summary of mismatch between rational authority and credibility

In the paper “Rational Authority and social Power: Towards a truly Social Epistemology” Fricker develops an approach to knowledge which relies strongly on testimony drawing on three features of good informants: “competence, trustworthiness and indicator-properties”. An example of competence is a pianist who can play the piano, being able to competently assess another person’s ability to play the piano. Trustworthiness is a feature of a good informant as it creates willingness to part with information and a good track record of non-deception. An example to demonstrate this is that someone who has always been honest when telling me of my appearance for a night out is trustworthy in telling me how my appearance is for a party. Indicator properties entail that a potential informant is ‘likely right about p’. To be right about p is to have a true belief. The truth claim with respect to p is important for the inquirer, so the inquirer needs both truth and competence to be present. Indicator-properties therefore signal the presence of both competence and trustworthiness.

Having rational authority demonstrates competence and trustworthiness, and someone who has indicator-properties has credibility.  A person who has both rational authority and credibility is a good informant. It is this concept of a good informant that raises the possibility of mismatch between rational authority and credibility. This comes about in two ways- one could be rationally authoritative without recognition of being so, and one can appear rationally authoritative when they are not. This is mere credibility. Either of these mismatches may be due to credibility only defeasibly being correlated with rational authority, its presence not ensuring rational authority, and its absence not ensuring a lack of it.

There are two examples to demonstrate this: one which shows it is possible to have no credibility when rational authority is present and another where there is credibility but there is no rational authority creating mere credibility. Take someone who has a track record of not being able to tell the difference between deductive and inductive arguments. Say this person recently learned how to tell the difference between a deductive and inductive argument, they would not then gain credibility with respect to knowing the difference between deductive and inductive argument until they had a reformed track record. This creates a mismatch between rational authority and credibility as rational authority is present, but credibility is not.

By contrast someone who is falsely seen to have a good track record of distinguishing between deductive and inductive argument has mere credibility, as they appear rationally authoritative due to the fact they are seen as trustworthy and competent when they are not. This creates a mismatch between rational authority and credibility as there is only the appearance of rational authority, creating mere credibility.