b. 1946
Paul L. Harris is a developmental psychologist at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, known for his research on how children acquire knowledge through testimony, imagination, and trust in informants. His work bridges developmental psychology and epistemology, exploring how humans—from early childhood—rely on chains of testimony to build vast stores of knowledge they could never verify firsthand. His influential 2012 book 'Trusting What You're Told' argues that testimony is the primary epistemic engine of human cognition.
Authored 'Trusting What You're Told: How Children Learn from Others' (2012), a landmark study of testimonial epistemology in child development
Demonstrated that children rely heavily on testimony chains for knowledge of unobservable and historical facts
Conducted foundational research on children's selective trust in informants based on reliability cues
Advanced understanding of the role of imagination in children's emotional and cognitive development
Contributed empirical grounding to philosophical debates on the epistemic autonomy vs. testimony-dependence of human knowers
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