Alison Springle

According to ‘orthodox’ representationalism, perceptual states possess constitutive veridicality (truth, accuracy, or satisfaction) conditions. Typically, philosophers who deny orthodox representationalism endorse some variety of anti-representationalism. But we argue that these haven’t always been, and needn’t continue to be, the only options. Philosophers including Descartes, Malebranche and Helmholtz appear to have rejected orthodox representationalism while nonetheless endorsing perceptual representations of a fundamentally practical kind not captured by orthodox representationalism. Moreover, we argue that the perceptual science called on by contemporary philosophers to defend orthodox representationalism instead motivates a return to this older view, and we suggest that contemporary philosophers may conceptualize fundamentally practical perceptual representations as _‘de agendo’_ representations, a species of representation that has constitutive appropriateness rather than veridicality conditions.

Public discourse implicitly appeals to what we call the “Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument” (TUA). To motivate, articulate, and assess the TUA, we appeal to Hawley’s (2019) commitment account of trust and trustworthiness. On Hawley’s account, being trustworthy consists in the successful avoidance of unfulfilled commitments and involves three components: the actual avoidance of unfulfilled commitments, sincerity in one’s taking on elective commitments, and competence in fulfilling commitments one has incurred. In contexts of testimony, what’s at issue is the speaker’s competence and sincere intention to speak truthfully. The TUA targets trauma victims’ competence rather than their sincerity. According to the TUA, empirical evidence shows that trauma undermines victims’ trustworthiness with regard to speaking truthfully about their trauma by undermining their competence to remember the relevant event. We argue that what the evidence shows is rather that remembering traumatic events involves a distinct “mode of manifesting” the competence to remember particular events from the personal past. Trauma victims are competent to speak truthfully about their trauma and ought to be trusted at least with regard to the central details of the event. By suggesting otherwise, the TUA threatens an insidious form of epistemic injustice which Hawley’s account helps us locate.