Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Seyyed Mohsen Eslami

Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The relationship between the author and the authored text is important from various aspects. Parts of the ethics of research and writing dealing with plagiarism and ghostwriting may be seen as about this very issue. I argue that, along with this, that editing may distort the relationship between the author and the authored text and put the readers in a problematic epistemic situation. In this regard, I appeal to the debates over epistemology of testimony. There are at least two general views about trust in others’ testimony: that we need positive reasons or evidence to trust, or that it suffices if there are no negative ones against the trust. It turns out that either way, to trust critical book reviews (and similar forms of writing) we need reasons or evidence for and against to trust the author. And as long as editing may eliminate such evidence, it weakens our epistemic situation as we become unable to take an epistemically proper stance toward the author. In the end, an objection is addressed. One might say that the same worry applies to all sorts of texts, and thus editing becomes basically wrong – not only in the case of short critical writings. In response, I argue that this is not necessarily the case since such forms of writing have specific features. Meanwhile, it seems true that considerations about epistemology of testimony can lead to further questions about editing in general

Keywords

• Editing
• Epistemology of Testimony
• Book Critique
• Ethics of Writing
• Research Ethics

Main Subjects

• philosophy