epistemology of testimony concerns how we should evaluate these
beliefs. Here are the main questions. When are the beliefs justified,
and why? When do they amount to knowledge, and why?
When someone tells us p, where p is some statement, and we accept it,
then we are forming a testimonially-based belief that p. Testimony in
this sense need not be formal testimony in a courtroom; it happens
whenever one person tells something to someone else. What conditions
should be placed on the recipient of testimonially-based beliefs? Must
the recipient of testimony have beliefs about the reliability of the
testifier, or inductive support for such a belief? Or, on the other
hand, is it enough if the testifier is in fact reliable, and a
recipient may satisfy his epistemic duties without having a belief
about that reliability? What external environmental conditions should
be placed on the testifier. For the recipient to know something, must
the testifier know it, too?
For our basic case of testimonially-based belief, let us say that T,
our testifier, says p to S, our epistemic subject, and S believes that
p. This article will first survey arguments related to S-side issues,
then those related to T-side questions.
1. Some Terminology, Abbreviations, and Caveats
This article considers the epistemology of testimonially-based belief.
Let's unpack that.
Discussing the basis of different beliefs presupposes that one
important way we should categorize beliefs is by where they came from.
The basis of a belief is its source or root. When we look across the
room and see a chair, we form a perceptually-based belief that there
is a chair nearby. When we believe that p and believe that p entails
q, and then conclude that q, we form a deductively-based belief that
q. When we observe that gravity has operated in the past and we infer
that it will continue to operate in the future, we form an
inductively-based belief about gravity. When we remember what we ate
this morning, we form a memorially-based belief about our breakfast.
And when someone tells us that p, and we accept it, we form a
testimonially-based belief that p. Testimony in this sense need not be
formal testimony in a courtroom, but happens whenever one person tells
something to someone else.
It will be helpful to use the same terminology throughout this
article. For our basic case of testimonially-based belief, let us say
that T, our testifier, says p to S, our epistemic subject, and S
believes that p. Different permutations will be considered, but this
will be the terminology for the basic case.
Actual beliefs might not, of course, have only one basis. A belief
might be partly testimonially-based and partly perceptually-based,
just as it might be partly inductively-based and partly
memorially-based. However, an understanding of pure cases, which we
will pursue in this article, should illuminate hybrid instances.
Now, the epistemology of a belief is a particular sort of evaluation.
Epistemologists assign honors like "knowledge" or "justification" to
beliefs based on whether those beliefs are up to snuff epistemically.
The epistemology of testimonially-based belief, then, concerns the
epistemic status of S's belief that p. Is it justified? Is it
rational? Is it warranted? Is it sufficiently supported by evidence?
Is S entitled to believe it? Does S know that p?
One way to speak of the epistemology of testimonially-based belief is
to speak directly of the epistemic status at issue: we can talk about
testimonially-based knowledge, testimonially-based justification, or
testimonial evidence.
Many of the contemporary disputes in the epistemology of testimony
occur in two broad fields. One dispute, or set of disputes, concerns
the extent of the internal conditions placed on testimonially-based
belief related to the recipient, S. (To phrase the debate in terms of
internal conditions is not to beg the question against epistemic
externalism the externalist is characterized precisely by his failure
to place such demands regarding the internal accessibility. See, for
instance, the title of Bergmann 2006b: Justification Without
Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism.) When is a
testimonially-based belief justified, or rational, or reasonable, or
permissible, or within our epistemic entitlements? Is
testimonially-based justification really a special case of
inferentially-based justification, or is it (instead) analogous to
perceptually- or memorially-based justification? What sorts of
epistemic demands do we properly place on those who believe what
others tell them? Coady 1973 uses the terms "reductionism" and
"anti-reductionism" to describe approaches to these issues. Speaking
broadly, reductionism views testimony as akin to inference and places
a relatively heavy burden on the recipient of testimony, while
anti-reductionism views testimony as akin to perception or memory and
places a relatively light burden on the recipient of testimony.
A second area involves the external conditions on the testifier, T, in
order for S to know that p. Must T know that p herself? Must T's
testimony even be true? Must T reliably testify that p?
This article will first survey arguments related to S-side issues,
then those related to T-side questions. These two areas do not by any
means exhaust the topics of great interest to epistemology, but are a
useful first place to begin.
As noted in the final section of this article, there are some
important disputes about exactly what counts as "testimony." For the
most part, this article will make do with a rough "T told S that p"
formulation. However, especially in T-side issues, a key issue is
frequently whether a proposed counterexample counts as
testimonially-based belief. This article can only suggest some of the
relevant considerations to that issue, rather than canvassing it in
detail.
This article focuses chiefly on the epistemology of testimony in
general, rather than the epistemology of human testimony. Because
there is considerable controversy about what is required, as a
conceptual matter, for testimonially-based knowledge or justification
or rationality, it seems wisest to get as clear a view of the nature
of testimonial justification and testimonial knowledge, as such,
before proceeding to more obviously practical considerations related
to an evaluation of particular actual testimonially-based beliefs. To
the extent that we only consider the epistemology of testimony in
general, our conclusions may be relatively thin and unsatisfying.
However, controversy regarding the basic nature of epistemic phenomena
across the universe of possible testimonially-based beliefs means that
this sort of preliminary brush-clearing is important.
2. Recipient (S)-Side Questions
a. Characterizing the Debate
The most prominent debate in the epistemology of testimony is between
"reductionism" and "non-reductionism," terms due to Coady 1973. The
earliest clear statements of these positions appear in David Hume and
Thomas Reid. Hume said, "[T]here is no species of reasoning more
common, more useful, and more necessary to human life, than that which
is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses
and spectators. … [O]ur assurance in any argument of this kind is
derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity
of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the
reports of witnesses." (Hume 1748, section X, at 74.) Hume's picture
is that we properly form beliefs based on testimony only because we
have seen other confirmed instances. Testimonially-based justification
is therefore reducible to a combination of perceptually-, memorially-,
and inferentially-based justification. (In theory, one might also
include a priori insight among the sources to which testimonial
justification is reduced, though Hume does not do so.)
Reid, however, argued that children properly trust others even when
they lack any past inductive basis in their experience: "[I]f
credulity were the effect of reasoning and experience, it must grow up
and gather strength, in the same proportion as reason and experience
do. But, if it is the gift of Nature, it will be strongest in
childhood, and limited and restrained by experience; and the most
superficial view of human nature shews, that the last is really the
case, and not the first. … [N]ature intends that our belief should be
guided by the authority and reason of others before it can be guided
by our own reason." (Reid 1764, chapter 6, section 24, at 96.) Reid
suggests that we have an innate faculty, unconfirmed by
personally-observed earlier instances, which properly causes us to
trust those who testify. Testimonially-based justification flows from
the reliability of this faculty, and so it is not reducible to
perceptually- and inferentially-based justification.
The reducibility of testimonially-based justification is thus one way
to characterize the debate between Hume and Reid and their modern
successors over the internal conditions on testimonially-based
beliefs. A second way to characterize such disputes is to ask to what
extent testimonially-based beliefs are implicitly inferential. A
Humean approach holds that we infer the reliability of a present bit
of testimony from the reliability of earlier instances, while a
Reidian approach holds that testimonially-based beliefs are properly
non-inferential, or direct. The inferentialist sees
testimonially-based belief as the acceptance (or the hypothetical
acceptance) of an argument like this:
1. T is telling me that p;
2. T, or people like T, have generally been reliable in the past
telling me, or other people, things like p; so
3. T is probably reliable on this occasion; so
4. p.
The non-inferentialist sees testimony as less like an invitation to an
argument and more like the input to a machine. T tells S that p, and,
seizing upon T's act of communication, S's testimony-processing
faculty causes S to believe that p.
(Audi 1997 helpfully distinguishes between hypothetical and actual
inferences. He holds that testimonially-based beliefs are formed
directly, but are nonetheless justified on the basis of other beliefs;
such beliefs could be used to support the testimonially-based belief,
but need not be part of its actual genesis.)
Lackey 2006a gives relatively full recent lists of the adversaries in
the S-side literature in terms of reductionism (at 183 n.3) versus
nonreductionism (at 186 n.19), while Graham 2006:93 does the same in
terms of inferential versus direct views. These lists appear below,
just before the bibliography.
A third way to characterize disputes over testimonially-based beliefs
is to ask to what extent testimonially-based justification is
analogous to perceptually-based justification. The Humean-reductionist
tradition sees strong disanalogies, while the Reidian-non-reductionist
tradition sees a strong analogy between the sources. See, for
instance, Lackey 2005:163 ("non-reductionists maintain that testimony
is just as basic a source of justification (knowledge, warrant,
entitlement, and so forth) as sense-perception, memory, inference, and
the like"); Graham 2004:n.4 ("The central claim the Anti-Reductionist
makes is that the epistemologies of perception, memory, and testimony
should all look more or less alike.").
None of these formulations captures contemporary debates perfectly
well. Few contemporary philosophers will endorse Hume's reductionist
or inferentialist approach to testimonially-based belief in anything
close to full form. Some philosophers would demand that S have
positive reasons to believe in T's reliability, or place other demands
on S, but almost all of them stop short of insisting that S have a
sufficiently-large inductive base to justify an inference that p from
other beliefs, or to reduce testimonially-based justification to
perceptually-, memorially-, and inferentially-based beliefs. Regarding
the analogy between the epistemology of perceptually- and
testimonially-based beliefs, even Reid, the prototype
non-reductionist, saw significant disanalogies between beliefs based
on perception and testimony. See Reid 1785 (article 2, chapter 20, at
203): "There is no doubt an analogy between the evidence of the senses
and the evidence of testimony. … But there is a real difference
between the two as well as a similarity. When we believe something on
the basis of someone's testimony, we rely on that person's authority.
But we have no such authority for believing our senses."
Rather than characterizing the internal dispute solely in terms of
reductionism, or inferentialism, or a perceptual-testimonial analogy,
this article will simply consider arguments in favor of relatively
demanding approach to testimony versus arguments in favor of a
relatively less demanding approach. Details about exactly which
demands different authors would make on testimonially-based belief are
best explained individually. Rather than applying labels like
"Reductionist" or "Inferentialist," this article simply uses "Liberal"
and "Conservative." Liberals are less demanding on testimonially-based
justification and allow testimonially-based beliefs to count as
justified, or as knowledge, more liberally; conservatives are more
demanding and dispense testimonially-based epistemic honors more
conservatively. In considering each demand, this article will also ask
whether the demand might also reasonably be placed on
perceptually-based beliefs as well.
The usage of "liberal" and "conservative" here has a kinship with the
technical use of these terms in Graham 2006:95, but it is not the
same. Graham uses the labels "reactionary," "conservative,"
"moderate," and "liberal" to refer to those who accept or reject
specific basic principles of epistemic justification. Graham's
"reactionary" accepts only principles regarding a priori insight,
internal experiences, and deduction, rejecting principles related to
memory, enumerative induction, inference to the best explanation,
perception, and testimony. Graham's "conservative" rejects only
principles regarding perception and testimony; his "moderate" rejects
only the principle regarding testimony, while his "liberal"—Graham's
own view—accepts the principle for testimony as well. Graham's use of
these principles in comparing testimony to perception and memory is
discussed below.
Some philosophers place demands on testimonially-based beliefs
regarding some epistemic honors, but not others. For instance, Audi
1997 is relatively demanding regarding testimonially-based
justification, but because he does not think justification is required
for knowledge, he is relatively lenient regarding testimonially-based
knowledge. Burge 1993:458-59 is relatively lenient regarding what he
calls testimonial "entitlement," but reserves the label
"justification" for instances where S is aware of an entitlement.
Graham 2006:104ff. is relatively lenient regarding testimonially-based
"pro tanto" justification—that is, he allows testimonially-based
beliefs to have some justification relatively easily—but more
demanding when considering whether S would have enough pro-tanto
justification to have a justified belief. Plantinga 1993:82 similarly
distinguishes between S having some testimonially-based evidence from
having enough for S to have knowledge: "Testimonial evidence is indeed
evidence; and if I get enough and strong enough testimonial evidence
for a give fact … the belief in question may have enough warrant to
constitute knowledge."
Finally for preliminaries, we should distinguish arguments about what
demands to place on testimonially-based beliefs from arguments about
how those demands might be satisfied. Coady, Burge, and Graham suggest
in different ways that we have a priori reason to accept
testimonially-based beliefs, but they are all liberal about whether to
place a general demand that testimonially-based beliefs be based on
reasons such as the ones they offer. This article very briefly surveys
their three approaches in a separate section.
b. Arguments in Favor of Demands on Testimonially-Based Beliefs
i. T's Ability to Deceive
Faulkner 2000 argues that the fact that testimony comes from a person,
rather than an inanimate object, is a reason to be more demanding on
testimonially-based beliefs than on perceptually-based beliefs. Lackey
2006a:176 and 188 n.44 also endorses this argument. People like T can
lie, but the matter in our perceptual environment cannot. See also
Audi 2006:40: "[T] must in some sense, though not necessarily by
conscious choice, select what to attend to, and in doing so can also
lie or, in a certain way, mislead … For the basic sources, there is no
comparable analogue of such voluntary representation of information."
One way to make the point more precise is to claim that because free
actions are particularly indeterministic—that is, because determinism
is false, and so the past plus laws is not enough to guarantee future
free actions—the environment for a testimonially-based belief cannot
be regular and law-governed in the way that the environment for a
perceptually-based belief can be. Graham 2004 considers such an
argument in detail. He argues, however, that the presence of human
freedom in testimonial cases is not a significant reason to prefer a
conservative approach. He argues that if a libertarian approach to
human freedom undermines the predictability of human actions, then it
would also undermine a conservative approach to testimony; if T's
actions were unpredictable, then S could never have a proper basis on
which to believe that T is likely to be honest, for instance. However,
Graham argues that if libertarianism does not undermine
predictability—either because it is false, or because counterfactuals
of freedom are nonetheless somehow true—then testimonial liberalism is
not threatened by human freedom, because the environments for
testimonially-based beliefs can in fact be as predictable as the
environments for perceptually-based beliefs.
Green 2006:82ff. argues that freedom is not distinctive of
testimonially-based beliefs. Faulkner and Lackey both refer to this
factor as a reason to distinguish perceptually-based beliefs from
testimonially-based beliefs. However, perceptually-based beliefs can
also suffer from the influence of deception. Fake objects, for
instance, can be the result of deception, and perceptual-based beliefs
about fake objects can obviously go awry because of the influence of
agency on a perceptual environment. If the possibility of deception is
a good reason to think that S requires positive reasons to believe T,
then there seems to be equally strong reason require that S have
positive reasons to believe that the objects of her perceptually-based
beliefs are genuine. The conservative might respond that deception may
sometimes be at stake in a perceptually-based belief, but deception is
always a possibility for testimonially-based ones. However, this seems
clearly untrue as a conceptual matter; it is at least possible for T
to be a reliable robot lacking freedom. And even among common human
experience, there are cases where people lack the time to deliberate
about deception; human free human action is not always at stake in
testimonially-based belief.
ii. Individual Counterexamples and Intuitions about Irresponsibility
and Gullibility
While she criticizes reductionism, Lackey 2006a argues that S does
need positive reasons to believe T's testimony. She relies on an
example in which T is an extraterrestrial alien, dropping what appears
to S to be a diary written in English, describing events on T's home
planet. Because, Lackey thinks, S has no reason to believe that the
diary really is English, is not ironic, and so on, S's belief is
unjustified. "[H]earers need positive reasons in order to acquire
testimonial justification, thereby avoiding the charge of …
gullibility and intellectual irresponsibility." Lackey 2006a:179;
compare the title of Fricker 1994, "Against Gullibility."
Testimonial liberals might respond to Lackey's counterexample by
simply reporting different intuitions. S is entitled to believe even
reports from aliens that are apparently in English, and may assume
without evidence (and in the absence of counter-evidence) that they
are sincere and so on. Intuitions about the vice of gullibility may
differ: liberals might say that it in fact a vice to be too skeptical
of others' reports when there is no positive reason to doubt them.
Green 2006:67ff. argues that a perceptual analogue to the alien case
can be constructed. S is suddenly transported to an unfamiliar
perceptual environment and seems to see certain objects outside what
looks like a window. But S may have no reason to think that the window
is not, for instance, a television screen showing a greatly-magnified
image of a scene far away, rather than a window opening onto nearby
ordinary-sized objects. If S's perceptually-based beliefs in that
scenario do not required positive reasons to believe that his
perceptual environment and faculties are functioning normally, then it
is not clear why S need such reasons in the testimonial case.
In arguing against gullibility, Fricker 1994 argues in favor of S's
duty to monitor T for signs of untrustworthiness, suggesting that
neglecting such a duty makes S gullible. Those who advocate S
presumptive right to trust T, she argues, must dispense with any duty
in S to monitor T for signs of untrustworthiness. Goldberg and
Henderson 2005 argue, however, that the testimonial non-reductionist
can also countenance a requirement that S be sensitive to signs of T's
untrustworthiness; Fricker 2006c responds. Particularly after
Fricker's reply, it is not immediately obvious that the dispute
between Goldberg and Henderson and Fricker is over anything
epistemically substantive; at first glance the dispute is merely over
the label "anti-reductionism" would properly apply to a view that
imposes on S a robust duty to monitor T. However, the substantive
issue about how best to characterize and understand the epistemic
significance of the sensitivity to defeaters is of relevance even if
it does not push toward either testimonial liberalism or conservatism.
iii. S's Ability Not to Trust T
Fricker 2004:119 suggests that S has an unusual amount of freedom
related to the formation of testimonially-based beliefs. The action of
trusting a testifier is one which is taken in a self-aware way, unlike
the formation of a perceptually-based belief. Audi 2006:40 makes a
similar suggestion: "[S] commonly can withhold belief, if not at will
then indirectly, by taking on a highly cautionary frame of mind."
Green 2006:64 argues that we have similar freedom to reject even
perceptually-based beliefs. We can indulge skeptical scenarios, like
being a brain in a vat, without much difficulty. Further, there might
be beings who accept testimony as readily as we accept the
deliverances of our senses; there does not seem to be anything
inherent about testimony that makes us freer to reject it.
iv. Operational Dependence on Other Sources
Strawson 1994:24 suggests that testimony as a source of beliefs
requires other sources, such as perception: "[T]he employment of
perception and memory is a necessary condition of the acquisition and
retention of any knowledge (or belief) which is communicated
linguistically…" Audi 2006:31 notes, "In order to receive your
testimony about the time, I must hear you or otherwise perceive—in
some perhaps very broad sense of 'perceive'—what you say… [T]estimony
is … operationally dependent on perception." Audi 2002:80 says,
"[A]part from perceptual justification for believing something to the
effect that you attested to p, I cannot acquire justification for
believing it on the basis of your testimony."
For human beings, S's sensations that accompany her reception of T's
testimony will also supply ground for perceptually-based beliefs.
However, it seems possible to imagine beings who go directly from
sensations to the formation of testimonially-based beliefs, lacking
even the ability to form perceptually-based beliefs on the basis of
those sensations. They would have the ability to receive testimony,
but not necessarily the ability to form related perceptually-based
beliefs. They might reason inductively about these testimonially-based
beliefs through forming higher-order beliefs about the existence of
the sensations.
Burge 1993:460 offers a related response. He argues that an a priori
entitlement like the belief in a mathematical proof might be dependent
on sense perception in the sense that, for instance, I must see the
writing on a page in order to understand the proof. However, he argues
that such a role for perception does not contribute to the "rational
or normative force behind [such] beliefs." Likewise,
perceptually-based beliefs might allow human beings to obtain
testimonially-based beliefs without contributing to the justification
or other epistemic status of such beliefs. If that is correct, then
the operational dependence that Strawson and Audi highlight is not of
epistemic consequence.
v. Defeasibility of Testimonially-Based Beliefs by Other Sources
Plantinga 1993 and Audi 2006 suggest that testimony differs from
sources like perception in the way in which testimonially-based
beliefs can be defeated by other sources, or the way in which other
sources of evidence can trump testimonially-based evidence. Plantinga
says (at 87), "[I]n many situations, while testimony does indeed
provide warrant, there is a cognitively superior way. I learn by way
of testimony that first-order logic is complete…. I do even better,
however, if I come to see these truths for myself…" Audi says (at 39),
"[W]e cannot test the reliability of one of these basic sources [that
is, for Audi, a source like perception or memory, but not testimony]
or even confirm an instance of it without relying on that very source.
… With testimony, one can, in principle, check reliability using any
of the standard basic sources."
One response to Plantinga and Audi is to point out instances in which
perceptually- or memorially-based beliefs could be checked, or
trumped, by testimonially-based beliefs. For instance, S might see a
strange phenomenon, strange enough that S asks others nearby if they
are seeing what S thinks he's seeing. S might be worried about his
perceptual or memorial faculties, and so seek testimony to confirm
them. Graham 2006:102 makes a similar point. After listing several
ways in which sources besides testimony can be defeated, he notes,
"That a source is a source of defeaters for beliefs from another
source, or even from itself, does not show that the other source
depends for justification on inferential support from another source,
or even itself. … The fact that my perception defeats your testimony
does not show that testimony is inferential and not direct. Indeed,
the fact that testimony-based beliefs sometimes defeat perceptual
beliefs does not show that testimony is prior to perception."
vi. From a No-Defeater Condition to Positive-Reason-to-Believe Condition
Most testimonial liberals include a defeater condition on
testimonially-based knowledge or justification. S's entitlement to
believe T is defeasible, if other contrary information about p, or
about T, is available to S. A conservative could argue, in line with
the well-known approach of BonJour, that including such a requirement,
but not a requirement of positive reasons to believe in T's
reliability, would be inconsistent, or an "untenable half-way house."
Bonjour 1980 and 2003 consider an S informed by a reliable clairvoyant
faculty that p, but who also has either (a) strong evidence that ~p,
or (b) strong evidence that his clairvoyant power is unreliable, or
(c) no evidence to believe that the faculty is reliable. While a
defeater condition could handle cases (a) or (b), BonJour argues that
those who say that knowledge or justification is defeated in these
cases should also say that it is defeated in case (c). Replacing the
clairvoyant faculty with T, we can construct an exactly parallel
argument that those testimonial liberals who admit that S lacks
justification or knowledge where S has evidence that ~p, or evidence
that T is unreliable, should also concede that S lacks knowledge or
justification where S has no evidence that T is reliable. (Compare
Lackey 2006a:168 and 186 n.21, noting that the way in which accounts
of testimony typically add a defeater condition is the same as the way
they add such a condition in response to BonJour's counterexamples.)
The testimonial liberal can resist this argument, however, in the same
way that BonJour's opponents resist his claims in general, by
reporting contrary intuitions on his examples. Green 2007 offers one
attempt to defend the tenability of an approach to either knowledge or
justification that imposes a no-defeater requirement, but not a
positive-reasons-to-believe-in-reliability condition, based on the way
that the law handles fraud cases. The law holds that plaintiffs who
sue for fraud lack "justified reliance" if they have defeaters for
their fraudulently-induced belief, but not if they merely lack a
reason to believe that the defendant is reliable. (Compare Bergmann
2006a:691 ("One perfectly sensible externalist reply is to say that
although the no-defeater requirement seems intuitively obvious, the
awareness requirement does not.")).
vii. S's Higher-Order Beliefs About T
When T tells S that p, one might demand that S have (on pain of
"ignorant" or "unjustified" status) other beliefs concerning T or T's
trustworthiness. The existence or epistemic quality of these
higher-order beliefs would matter regarding the evaluation of S's
underlying belief that p. Fricker 2006b:600 suggests that in forming
testimonially-based beliefs by trusting T, S typically has a
higher-order belief about T and his trustworthiness: "Once a hearer
forms belief that [p] on a teller T's say-so, she is consequently
committed to the proposition that T knows that [p]. But her belief
about T which constitutes this trust, antecedent to her utterance, is
something like this: T is such that not easily would she assert that
[p], vouch for the truth of [p], unless she knew that [p]." Weiner
2003 (chapter 3 at 5) likewise suggests that testimonially-based
beliefs, unlike perceptually-based ones, are typically attended by
beliefs about T: "When we form beliefs through perception, we may do
so automatically, without any particular belief about how our
perceptual system works. When we form beliefs through testimony, at
some level we are aware that we are believing what a person says, and
that this person is presenting her testimony as her own belief."
Green 2006:87ff. argues, however, that it is not clear that testimony
is really different from perception in this respect. Many recipients
of testimony have a vague belief about T, but for many others this
belief is at best implicit, and for others it is hard to say that even
an implicit belief arises. Likewise for perceptually-based belief:
many perceivers form beliefs that they are receiving information from
their perceptual environments and their perceptual faculties; for
others this belief is either vague, or implicit, or not really there
at all. There does not seem to be any necessary inhibition of
higher-order beliefs from the very nature of perception, nor any
necessary production of higher-order beliefs from the very nature of
testimony.
c. Arguments Against Demands on Testimonially-Based Beliefs
i. Insufficient Inductive Base
The most common objection to putting greater demands on
testimonially-based beliefs is that these heightened demands simply
cannot be satisfied in cases that, intuitively, do amount to knowledge
or justified belief. Plantinga 1993:79 puts the point this way:
Reid is surely right in thinking that the beliefs we form by way
of credulity or testimony are typically held in the basic way, not by
way of inductive or abductive evidence from other things I believe. I
am five years old; my father tells me that Australia is a large
country and occupies an entire continent all by itself. I don't say to
myself, "My father says thus and so; most of the time when I have
checked what he says has turned out to be true; so probably this is;
so probably Australia is a very large country that occupies an entire
continent by itself." I could reason that way and in certain
specialized circumstances we do reason that way. But typically we
don't. Typically we just believe what we are told, and believe it in
the basic way. … I say I could reason in the inductive way to what
testimony testifies to; but of course I could not have reasoned thus
in coming to the first beliefs I held on the basis of testimony.
Relatedly, Lackey 2006a argues that a general inductive basis for
belief in "testimony" would fail because the category of
testimonially-based beliefs is too heterogeneous to support the
relevant induction. The inference from particular instances of
confirmed testimony to new cases is only as strong as the basis for
believing that new instances will be similar to old ones. But those
who testify about, say, events in Greece 2500 years ago, will be very
different from those who testify about middle-sized dry goods in the
next room.
A kindred point that liberals make in favor of the
insufficient-inductive-base argument is to point out Hume's mistaken
explanation for why our testimonialy-based beliefs are supported
inductively. For instance, Coady 1992:79-82 documents several places
where Hume, in describing the inductive base for a belief in the
reliability of testimony, actually uses evidence drawn from other
people. As Van Cleve 2006:67 summarizes the argument, "the vast
majority (or perhaps even the totality) of what passes for
corroboration of testimony itself relies on other testimony." Compare
Shogenji 2006:332: "[I]n justifying the epistemic subject's trust in
testimony the reductionist cannot cite other people's perception and
memory—for example, the reductionist cannot cite perception and memory
of the person who provides the testimony. Only the epistemic subject's
own perception and memory are relevant to the justification of her
trust in testimony."
Van Cleve responds to this argument, however, by suggesting that
corroboration of testimony is not inherently dependent on others; over
the course of his life, Van Cleve says he has verified a great number
of instances of testimony—both the existence of the Grand Canyon and
Taj Mahal, but also "thousands of more quotidian occurrences of
finding beer in the fridge or a restroom down the hall on the right
after being told where to look." He concludes that it is not necessary
that our inductive base is necessarily weak: "[W]hat matters is not
the proportion of testimonial beliefs I have checked, but the
proportion of checks taken that have had positive results." Van Cleve
2006:68.
Shogenji 2006 makes a unique defense of a conservative approach to
testimonially-based beliefs. He argues that if Coady is right that we
need to believe in the general reliability of testimony in order to
interpret testimonial utterances—a Davidsonian argument that this
article considers below—then if S has a non-testimonial basis for
interpreting a statement in a particular way, S can likewise infer the
general reliability of testimony from that basis. Shogeni says (at
339-340),
[B]y the time the epistemic subject is in possession of
testimonial evidence by interpreting people's utterances, her belief
in the general credibility of their testimony is well supported. For,
unless the hypothesis that testimony is generally credible is true,
the epistemic subject is unable to interpret utterances and hence has
no testimonial evidence. … The unintelligibility of testimony without
general credibility is … not an objection to reductionism about
testimonial justification, but a consequence of the dual role of the
observation used for interpretation—the observation confirms the
interpretation of utterances and the credibility of testimony at the
same time. … [E]ven a young child's trust in testimony can be
justified by her own perception and memory. In order for people's
utterances to be testimonial evidence for her, the child must have
interpreted the utterances, but the kind of experience that allows her
to interpret the utterances is also the kind of experience that
supports the general credibility of testimony.
Shogeni also argues that the ubiquity of testimonially-based
beliefs—and therefore the ubiquity of reliance on the reliability of
testimony—can be used to give greater confirmation for the reliability
of testimony. Because the general reliability of testimony is
implicated in so many of our beliefs, we have a large number of
opportunities to add small bits of confirmation to the hypothesis that
testimony is reliable. He says (at 343-344),
Beliefs based on testimony are part of the web of beliefs we
regularly rely on when we form a variety of expectations. This means
that the hypothesis that testimony is credible plays a crucial role
when we form these expectations. As a result, even if we do not
deliberately seek confirmation of the credibility hypothesis, it
receives tacit confirmation whenever observation matches the
expectations that are in part based on the credibility hypothesis.
Even if the degree of tacit confirmation by a single observation is
small, there are plenty of such observations. Their cumulative effect
is substantial and should be sufficient for justifying our trust in
testimony.
Interestingly, Shogeni does not argue that we should be more demanding
of testimonially-based beliefs than we are for perceptually-based
beliefs; he notes (at 345 n.15) that Shogenji 2000 "uses essentially
the same reasoning as described here to show that the reliability of
perception can be confirmed by the use of perception without
circularity."
What can the liberal say in response to such an argument? One response
would be to abandon Coady's Davidsonian argument that interpreting
testimonial utterances requires an assumption that testimony is
reliable. If that is not right—as liberals such as Graham and
Plantinga have argued—then the possibility of interpretation is not
enough to justify belief in the reliability of testimony.
Finally, even if the inductive base for testimonially-based beliefs is
poor, the conservative can reply to this sort of argument by simply
denying that we have very much testimonially-based justification or
testimonially-based knowledge. Van Cleve 2006:68 suggests this route
for children, suggesting that they do, in fact, lack epistemic
justification for their testimonially-based beliefs: "Children … go
through a credulous phase during which they believe without reason
nearly everything they are told. As reductionists, however, we must
hold that these beliefs are justified only in a pragmatic sense, not
in an epistemic sense."
ii. Analogies to Perception
Some liberals support lenient principles to govern testimonially-based
beliefs on the basis of their great similarity to principles that many
people believe govern perceptually-based beliefs.
For instance, Graham 2006:95ff. considers those who believe what he
calls PER ("If S's perceptual system represents an object as F (where
F is a perceptible property), and this causes or sustains in the
normal way S's belief of x that it is F, then that confers
justification on S's belief that x is F") and MEM ("If S seems to
remember that [p] and this causes or sustains in the normal way S's
belief that [p], then that confers justification on S's belief that
[p]"), but who reject what he calls TEST ("If a subject S (seemingly)
comprehends a (seeming) presentation-as-true by a (seeming) speaker
that [p], and if that causes or sustains in the normal way S's belief
that [p], then that confers justification on S's belief that [p]").
Graham then defends TEST against those who accept PER and MEM. He
notes (at 101-102) that those who accept PER and MEM would already
reject the idea that a difference in the degree of reliability should
amount to a difference in epistemic kind, and would also already
accept that perceptual or memorial beliefs can be direct, even though
they can be defeated by other sorts of beliefs. He likewise argues (at
100) that the reasons to adopt PER, rather than seeing perceptual
beliefs as inferential, are directly parallel to the reasons to adopt
TEST as well.
Green 2006 argues that testimonially-, memorially-, and
perceptually-based beliefs are on an epistemic par, in the sense that,
over the universes of possible beliefs based on the three sources, the
set of explanations of the epistemic status of those beliefs displays
the same structure. (He excludes beliefs that cannot be
perceptually-based, but could be testimonially- or memorially-based;
we cannot literally perceive mathematical facts, but we can be told
them, or remember them.) Green argues first that such parity is a more
economical account of epistemic phenomena—and so an account more
likely to be true—than accounts that distinguish sharply between the
three sources. Second, he argues (at 218 ff.) that the epistemic
parity of these sources follows from the epistemic innocence of
certain transformations which will turn instances of
testimonially-based beliefs into instances of beliefs based on the
other two sources, or vice-versa—that is, the claim that such
transformations preserve the structure of the explanation of epistemic
status.
Turning perceptually-based beliefs into testimonially-based beliefs
requires anthropomorphizing our sense faculties and
environments—considering a possible world in which our sense faculties
are monitored and operated by little persons who present messages to
us about our environment, by causing perceptual sensations just like
the ones in normal perceptually-based beliefs. Green suggests that the
structure of the explanation for the epistemic status of such
testimonially-based beliefs would have the same structure as the
explanations for the epistemic status of perceptually-based beliefs
before the transformation. The mere fact that a faculty for obtaining
information is operated by a person, Green claims, should not make a
difference in how that source of information produces justified
beliefs and knowledge. The opposite transformation—from
testimonially-based beliefs into perceptually-based beliefs—requires
treating our testifier T as a machine, akin to, say, a telescope. This
transformation would treat human beings as an environmental medium
through which information about the world passes in complicated ways.
Deception is possible when we get information from a testifier, but it
is also possible when we get information from a telescope (for
instance, if someone has put a fake picture on the end of it).
The conservative could respond to Green's argument by claiming that
these transformations are, in fact, not epistemically innocent.
Anthropomorphizing our sense faculties would inherently introduce the
element of human agency, and treating T as a perceptual device would
remove it. As summarized above, however, Green argues that agency is
already potentially at stake in cases of perception, for instance
because of the possibility that someone else has substituted a fake
object.
iii. Analogies to Memory
Several thinkers likewise draw analogies between testimonially-based
beliefs and memorially-based ones. Dummett 1994, for instance, quoted
above on relationship between the T-side and S-side debates, suggests
that both memory and testimony are both merely means of preserving or
transmitting knowledge, not of creating it, and are similarly direct
and lacking need for supporting beliefs. Schmitt 2006 argues that
transindividual reasons—that is, reasons that T has, but which also
count as reasons for S's belief—are no more problematic than the
transtemporal reasons at stake in memory—that is, reasons that S has
at time 1, but which also count as reasons for S's belief at time 2.
Foley 2001 argues that trust in others, at stake in testimony, is no
less justified than trust in oneself, at stake in memory.
As noted above, Green 2006 argues that testimony and memory are also
on an epistemic par. Green's method of transforming
testimonially-based beliefs into memorially-based beliefs is to treat
the testifier T as S's epistemic agent, and then to apply the fiction
of the law of agency, qui facit per alium, facit per se—"he who acts
through another, acts himself." If T's earlier actions are treated as
if they were actually S's own actions, then the transfer of
information from T to S will be the same sort of transfer of
information that happens when, using memory, S at time 1 transfers
information to S at time 2. Green's claim is that this transformation
keeps the structure of the explanation of epistemic status of the
resulting belief the same. On the other hand, turning memorially-based
beliefs into testimonially-based beliefs requires treating S at time 1
as a different person from S at time 2. If the earlier time slice is
someone else, and we treat the recovery of information from a memory
trace as the interpretation of a message from that person, then
memorially-based beliefs are transformed into testimonially-based
ones. Green's claim is that that transformation should not create or
preserve epistemic status, or affect the structure of its explanation.
As with the response to Green's argument for an analogy between
perception and testimony, the conservative could claim that there is
something inherently different between relying on one's own earlier
efforts and relying on someone else's; replacing "S at time 1" with
"T," or vice versa, inherently changes the structure of the
explanation of beliefs' epistemic status.
iv. Skepticism about Over-Intellectualization and Young Children
Another argument against demands on testimonially-based beliefs is
that, even if those demands might be able to be satisfied by those who
are particularly careful in considering earlier cases of confirmation,
it is improper to place too many intellectual demands on people's
everyday beliefs. Graham 2006:100 puts it this way: "[E]ven if the
reduction is possible, requiring it is overly demanding; the
requirement to reduce hyper-intellectualizes testimonial
justification." Young children, for instance, lack the intellectual
capacity to consider complicated issues regarding the reliability of
their parents or others who give them testimonially-based beliefs, and
so it is improper to place epistemic demands on them.
Lackey 2005 defends a conservative approach to testimony against the
infants-and-young-children objection by considering whether a similar
problem could afflict any approach to testimonial-based justification
that includes a non-defeater condition. No one suggests that
testimonially-based justification is indefeasible; rather, S is only
justified on the basis of T's testimony if S lacks a defeater for her
belief that p. For instance, if T tells S that p, but S already
believes that q and if q then ~p, she cannot just add the belief that
p, rendering her beliefs inconsistent. Defeaters can standardly
divided into doxastic, normative, and factual defeaters. Doxastic
defeaters are like those in the case we just considered: other beliefs
that S has that make it improper for her to believe p, or to accept
testimony that p from T. Normative defeaters are other beliefs that S
would have, if she performed her epistemic duties. Factual defeaters
defeat S's justification in virtue of being true. The standard example
is the fake barn; if S just happens to see the one real barn amidst a
countryside full of fakes, S's belief about the barn is not justified,
or at least does not count as knowledge. Similarly, if S just happens
to meet T, the one reliable testifier in a sea of unreliable ones,
then she has a factual defeater. Some epistemologists, though, are
fake-barn-case skeptics, and think that these cases are not obviously
cases where justification or knowledge fails.
Lackey's argument is that if young children, or animals, are not
capable of satisfying a positive-reasons demand on testimonially-based
beliefs because they are not capable of appreciating reasons, then for
the same reason they are likewise not capable of satisfying a
no-defeater condition, either regarding normative or doxastic
defeaters. Those who are not capable of understanding a reason for a
belief presumable also cannot understand either a conflict in beliefs,
as required by an appreciation of doxastic defeaters.
The liberal can resist Lackey's argument in at least three ways. One
way would be to deny that the existence of a no-defeaters condition
requires a defeater-recognition capacity. It is true, this response
would go, that young children must deal properly with any doxastic and
normative defeaters in order to be justified, but young children
simply lack such defeaters. Young children who lack the capacity to
appreciate reasons or the resolution of conflicting claims lack the
epistemic obligations presupposed by normative defeaters. They lack
the ability to investigate for defeaters, but fortunately they also
lack the duty to do so. This route, however, is unattractive to
Lackey, because she thinks it quite clear that if young children are
exposed to enough counterevidence for one of their beliefs, they
become unjustified in holding that belief. The liberal might attempt
to resist that intuition, however.
A second route for the liberal would be to retreat from the suggestion
that children lack the capacity to appreciate reasons at all. Rather,
he might insist that young children, while in principle capable of
appreciating reasons or defeaters, have a particularly bad inductive
base with respect to confirmed reports. It is not the cognitive
incapacity of the child, but her evidentiary incapacity, that
undermines the reasonableness of a demand for inductively-based
reasons to believe T. All of the confirmed reports of a young child,
for instance, are likely confined to a very small part of the world
and to only a few testifiers. The leap to believe what his parents
tell him about other subjects seems inductively very weak. This sort
of response would dodge Lackey's argument only by reconstruing the
argument as a special form of the bad-inductive-base argument.
A third route for the liberal, taken in Goldberg 2008, would stress
the role of reliable caretakers in shielding children from improper
testimonially-based beliefs. While children themselves may not be able
to appreciate the significance of defeating evidence, for instance,
their parents can. Goldberg argues that the presence of such an
external defeater-detection system is critical for testimonially-based
knowledge in young children. Goldberg draws (at 29) the lesson he
regards as radical: that "the factors in virtue of which a young
child's testimonial belief amounts to knowledge include
information-processing that takes place in mind/brains other than that
of the child herself."
v. The Assurance View as a Basis for Lessened Demands on S
Moran 2005, Ross 1986, and Hinchman 2005 and 2007 argue that, because
the testifier T has assumed responsibility for the truth of p, S's
responsibilities are necessarily lessened. In telling S that p, T is
not offering S evidence that p, but instead asking S to trust him.
Because the reception of testimony is inconsistent with S basing his
belief on evidence, S's responsibilities are necessarily lessened when
he forms a testimonially-based belief. To trust T is to rely on his
assurance, not to assume responsibility for the truth of p oneself.
Hinchman 2007:3 summarizes the argument: "[H]ow could [T] presume to
provide this warrant [for S's belief that p]? One way you could
provide it is by presenting yourself to A as a reliable gauge of the
truth. … The proposal … simply leaves out the act of assurance.
Assuring [S] that p isn't merely asserting that p with the thought
that you thereby give [S] evidence for p, since you're such a reliable
asserter (or believer). That formula omits the most basic respect in
which you address people, converse with people—inviting them to
believe you, not merely what you say."
However, Goldberg 2006 argues that both reductionists and
non-reductionists—both liberals and conservatives, in the terminology
of this article—can subscribe to a buck-passing principle, very
similar to the assumption-of-responsibility view. Even if T has
assumed the responsibility for certain epistemic desiderata regarding
p, S may have very demanding responsibilities of his own. For
instance, S may have an epistemic duty to select those most worthy of
buck-passing, much as a client has a duty to select a proper lawyer,
even though the client does not know as much about the law as the
lawyers he selects. On Green 2006's suggestion that T is S's epistemic
agent or employee, it is consistent to say both (a) that T takes
responsibilities for handling particular areas of S's epistemic
business, but (b) that S has responsibilities to select T
properly—just as employees assume responsibility for particular
functions of their employees, but employers still retain critical
responsibilities to select employees well. Weiner 2003b has similarly
argued that the view of testimony as an assurance does not contradict
a requirement that S have evidence for his testimonially-based
beliefs.
d. A Priori Reasons in Support of Testimonially-Based Beliefs
i. Coady's Davidsonian Argument from the Comprehensibility of Testimony
Some testimonial liberals contend that there is good a priori reason
to believe that testimonially-based beliefs are justified. Coady 1992
argues, building on Donald Davidson's views about radical
interpretation, that we must presuppose the reliability of testifiers
in order to interpret their utterances. If we were to encounter a
group of Martians interacting with each other using bits of language
in response to external stimuli, we could not interpret the Martians'
language unless we were to assume that the bits of language that
correlate with particular external stimuli are bits of language that
refer to those stimuli. Unless we assume that the language used by the
Martians generally tracks the world in which they live, we could not
begin to interpret their utterances. Hence testimony, in order to be
interpreted, must be generally reliable.
Graham 2000c argues, however, that it is possible for testifiers to be
generally unreliable, even though they interpret each others'
statements on the assumption that they are incorrect. He imagines (at
702ff.) a group of people who are both honest and good at interpreting
each others' utterances, but who because of perceptual failures, or
failures in memory, have mostly false beliefs about the world outside
their immediate perceptual environment. These people could interpret
utterances fine, but would still be unreliable testifiers. (For a
response to a similar argument from Davidson, see Plantinga 1993:80f.)
ii. Burge's Argument from Intelligible Presentation
Burge 1993 argues that S is a priori entitled to accept T's statement,
because it is, on its face, intelligible and presented as true. He
summarizes his argument (at 472–473):
We are apriori entitled to accept something that is prima facie
intelligible and presented as true. For prima facie intelligible
propositional contents prima facie presented as true bear an apriori
prima facie conceptual relation to a rational source of true
presentations-as-true: Intelligible propositional expressions
presuppose rational abilities and entitlement; so intelligible
presentations-as-true come prima facie backed by a rational source or
resource of reason; and both the content of intelligible propositional
presentations-as-true and the prima facie rationality of their source
indicate a prima facie source of truth. Intelligible affirmation is
the face of reason; reason is a guide to truth. We are apriori prima
facie entitled to take intelligible affirmation at face value.
One response to Burge's argument is to suggest that he seems to be
skipping over the assumption that T's rational faculties are
functioning properly. It may be that if S sees a T statement and sees
that it is intelligible, S may be entitled to think that it came from
a process that is geared toward presenting true statements; part of
what it is to understand that something is a piece of testimony is to
see that it is malfunctioning if it turns out to be false, or to have
been unreliably produced. But the critic can ask why, without more, we
should be entitled to assume that this process has turned out well.
Absent the assumption that T is in an environment conducive to proper
function of T's truth-seeking processes—an assumption that is false in
many possible worlds—it would seem that S should not be entitled to
rely on T's word, simply from the fact that it is the presentation of
a rational source.
Burge might respond that the worlds in which T's truth-seeking
faculties are not functioning properly are worlds that we may ignore,
because they are not relevant alternatives (like, for instance, the
brain-in-a-vat worlds that non-skeptics feel entitled to ignore).
However, Burge's argument does not depend on whether we are in a
possible world where testifiers tend to be reliable. It would seem to
work just as well in worlds where they are not. But is does not seem
plausible that everyone in any possible world is entitled to believe
that they are in worlds where testifiers are usually reliable.
iii. Graham's A Priori Necessary Conceptual Intuitions
Graham 2006 argues that TEST, his principle that T's statement
supplies pro tanto justification, is an a priori necessary conceptual
truth, even though testifiers are not reliable in all possible worlds.
Such a view of testimony fits with Graham's general
metaepistemological view that epistemic principles should be necessary
a priori conceptual truths about the proper aim of our beliefs.
However, Plantinga 1993:80 criticizes the suggestion that testimony is
necessarily evidence. He argues, in accord with Reid's statements
about the provisions of "Nature," that testimony only supplies
evidence the contingent human design plan provides—in line with an
environment in which testifiers generally speak the truth—that
properly functioning human beings trust statements from others.
3. Testifier (T)-Side Questions: Testimony and the Preservation of Knowledge
a. Background
For S to come to know that p by relying on T's testimony, S must
satisfy whatever internal conditions there are for knowledge, but this
is not enough. P must actually be true, of course, but T must also be
properly connected to the fact that p; as Gettier 1963 teaches, there
is also some sort of environmental condition on our testifier T in
order for S to know. Several authors give a relatively simple answer
to the environmental condition: T must, himself, know that p. Others
give other similar conditions, such as someone knowing that p on a
non-testimonial basis. Lackey 2003 gives an extensive list of such
thinkers, whom we might call testimonial knowledge-preservationists.
The discussion, like much of the post-Gettier literature, revolves
around the discussion of counterexamples and principles intended to
cover them.
If S's testimonially-based knowledge that p requires T's (or
someone's) knowledge that p, it would seem that testimony is "a
second-class citizen of the epistemic republic," as Plantinga 1993:87
puts it, because, unlike perception, testimony is not a source of
knowledge for the epistemic community as a whole; it is only a way of
spreading knowledge around that community. Much as a political
libertarian might see government as a tool useful only for
redistributing wealth, but not creating it, knowledge-preservationists
might see testimony as a tool useful only for spreading knowledge, but
not creating it.
In general, someone attracted to knowledge-preservationism—the thesis
that S's testimonially-based knowledge that p requires T to know that
p—can resist counterexamples in three ways. First, he can deny that,
as described, S really knows that p (the "Ignorant-S" response).
Second, he can claim that T, as described, really does know that p
(the "Knowing-T" response). Third, he can deny that S's belief that p
is really based on T's testimony that p (the "Not-Testimony"
response). More generally, where a different account of the
testimonial environmental condition is at stake, and a counterexample
claims to find an S who knows that p, but in which that environmental
condition fails, the defender of the account has the same three
options: deny that S knows, argue that the environmental condition is
actually met, or deny that the case is the proper sort of
testimonially-based belief. If none of the responses is available, of
course, the counterexample is effective, and the environmental
condition needs revision.
If knowledge by T is not the key environmental desideratum to S's
knowledge, what is? Several thinkers propose substituting a focus on
information. Goldberg 2001:526 argues that his example should convince
epistemologists of testimony to "widen our scope of interest from an
exclusive focus on content-preserving cases of [testimonially-based]
belief and knowledge to include all cases in which information is
conveyed in a testimonially-based way from speaker to hearer." The
alternative account to the testimonial environmental desideratum,
then, is that T possess information that p. (Goldberg's 2005
counterexamples might, however, undermine even that account.) Graham
2000:365 takes a similar view, explaining it at length: "According to
the model I prefer, knowledge is not transferred through
communication, rather Information is conveyed." Green 2006:47ff.
follows Graham and suggests that positional warrant is the key
environmental desideratum: information sufficient to support a belief
that p, if a doxastic subject were present.
b. The Cases
i. Untransmitted Defeaters
Lackey 1999 presents cases in which T does not know that p, because
either T has personal doubts about p, or because T should have doubts
about p, but in which T still reliably passes along the information
that p to S. T's defeaters are not necessarily transmitted to S.
Her first example is a biology teacher who does not believe her lesson
about evolution, but passes it on reliably because the school board
requires her to do so. Because the children reliably believe their
lesson, Lackey says, they know it, despite the fact that their
testifier does not. Both the Ignorant-S and Not-Testimony responses
have some plausibility here. Audi 2006:29 suggests the Ignorant-S
response: "If … [the students] simply take [the teacher's] word, they
are taking the word of someone who will deceive them when job
retention requires it…. It is highly doubtful that this kind of
testimonial origin would be an adequate basis of knowledge."
Schoolchildren who discovered that their teacher did not actually
believe her own lesson would presumably be startled and unsettled.
They perhaps relied on a premise like "My teacher knows the truth
about this lesson," and while it might be possible to get knowledge by
reasoning on the basis of a falsehood, this is not obviously such a
case. Teachers depend on their students viewing them as trustworthy
sources of information. A teacher who refuses to believe her own
lesson is like a host who refuses to eat the mean he serves a guest.
"If the teacher doesn't believe the lesson," a student could reason,
"why should I?" To attempt a Not-Testimony response—perhaps termed in
this case a Not-Testimony-From-T response—we might recharacterize the
case as testimony from the school board, rather than the teacher. A
school teacher who tells students what she doesn't believe isn't
really testifying, the suggestion might go; she is merely acting as a
conduit for the real testifier, the school board, who does in fact
know the lesson.
Lackey has defended her intuitions in the biology teacher case by
suggesting that, even though T does not know or believe that p, it is
still perfectly proper for her to assert that p, disputing the account
of knowledge as the norm of assertion contained in Williamson 2000.
Because the reliability of her lessons means that the teacher is
behaving properly in telling her students that p, there is likewise
nothing epistemically amiss in her students then believing that p on
her say-so. A full discussion of whether knowledge is the norm of
assertion, however, is not possible here.
Lackey's second example is someone with matching misperceptions and
pathological lies. For instance, whenever she sees a zebra, she thinks
it is an elephant, but has a pathological urge to tell people that
what she thinks are elephants are zebras, and so on. The Ignorant-S
response seems possible; it is not at all obvious that relying on
someone like that is a way to gain knowledge. Such a T seems close to
insane, and even if someone who is insane happens to be a reliable
speaker about what she has seen, S would have to know that in order to
gain knowledge from her statements. A similar response seems possible
for Lackey's third and fourth examples, where T is gripped by
skeptical worries or by the belief that her perceptual abilities are
faulty. If T is really and seriously worried about whether she is a
brain in a vat, or has radically unreliable powers of perception, such
that we would conclude that she does not know everyday things about
his environment, then it is hard to see how S could come to know those
things by relying on his say-so. Lackey's last example is someone who
is presented with evidence that her powers of perception are radically
unreliable, but who retains her perceptually-based beliefs anyway. In
response, the knowledge-preservationist could argue that defeating
evidence serious enough to make T's belief that p improper would, it
seems, be serious enough to make T's testimony that p similarly
improper, and likewise S's reliance on that testimony. (For a defense
of these suggested responses to Lackey's examples, based on the idea
that S takes T as his agent, and so an S who trusts a relevantly
misbehaving T should be charged with T's misbehavior, see Green
2006:137ff.)
Graham 2000a:379ff. promotes an example similar to Lackey's
misperceptions-and-pathological lies case. T has been raised in an
environment where the word "blue" refers to the color red, "red" to
blue, "green" to yellow, and "yellow" to green. Scientists aware of
T's malady install spectrum-reversing glasses on T, so that his
testimony now comes out right. Unlike someone who looks at a zebra,
thinks it is a giraffe, but has a pathological desire to call it a
zebra, we might think such a T is sane. Still, there is some reason to
think that the Ignorant-S response may work. If S were to learn that
when T looks at the sky, it seems red to him, S would be very alarmed,
and would not likely trust what T tells him about the colors of nearby
objects. That fact suggests that S has a defeater for his belief based
on T's testimony now; it implicitly relies on the false premise that T
is using words and perceiving colors normally. The fact that there are
two large errors in S's assumptions, albeit matching errors that cause
T's color reports to come out true, makes the status of S's knowledge
shaky.
ii. Zombie Testifiers
Green 2006:27ff. argues that T can testify to S, and support
knowledge, even if T entirely lacks phenomenology entirely, and so is
a zombie, or a machine. For instance, we might receive a phone call
from our credit card company noting suspicious behavior in our
account, but it could be a computer-generated voice speaking to us.
(In a possible world without phishing scams, we might also receive
such a message through email.) If beliefs require conscious
phenomenology, such testifiers would know nothing, and so would not
know p. Possible cases of machine testimony might be
phenomenologically indistinguishable from normal cases of
testimonially-based beliefs. The Ignorant-S response, denying that
such beliefs would be knowledge, seems clearly closed. We can surely
get knowledge from a machine. The Knowing-T response, by affirming
knowledge in T, would require knowledge without any phenomenal
beliefs, which seems very implausible. The Not-Testimony response is
the most promising route for the knowledge-preservationist: denying
that beliefs based on the testimony of machines would really be
"testimonially-based belief." Machines that cannot know things
likewise cannot perform speech acts, and testimony is a speech act.
In defense of his view that machine testimony really is testimony,
Green (at 36ff.) relies on his intuition that if two beliefs (a) have
the same epistemic status, (b) have the same contents, (c) are the
result of the exercise of the same cognitive ability by S, and (d)
have the same phenomenology for S, then the two beliefs should be
regarded by the epistemologist as similarly based; we should regard
either both, or neither, as testimonially-based. "Testimonially-based
belief" is, on this view, an epistemic tool, and describing the full
range of epistemic phenomena would be unnecessarily duplicative if we
were required to use two different terms or concepts to cover such
similar beliefs. Further, epistemic principles like those defended by
Graham 2006:95 would cover zombies or machines. Graham includes broad
conditions in TEST: "If a subject S (seemingly) comprehends a
(seeming) presentation-as-true by a (seeming) speaker that [p] …."
Green at 41 also argues that beliefs that come from the linguistic
output of machines need to be categorized in some way, and using a
category other than "testimonially-based belief" seems to multiply
epistemic categories beyond necessity. On the other hand, the
intuition that testimony is a type of speech act, requiring that T be
conscious, is very strong in some people. To the extent that such
thinkers would retain "testimonially-based belief" as an epistemic
concept, such thinkers would reach beyond epistemic status, content,
cognitive ability, and phenomenology to determine that concept's
application.
iii. High-Stakes T, Low-Stakes S
Hawthorne 2004 and Stanley 2005's interest-sensitive approaches to
knowledge suggest another way in which S might know, but T would not.
For instance, T's life might depend on getting to the bank
tomorrow—the mob wants its money, won't take a check, and will kill
him if it doesn't get it by the Saturday deadline. By Hawthorne and
Stanley's lights, T might not know that the bank is open tomorrow,
even if he has a fairly-clear recollection that banks in this town are
open on Saturdays, because knowledge requires enough certainty to
satisfy a particular subject's needs. But S, who does not owe the mob
any money, but who would like to have enough cash in his pocket to buy
his kids an ice-cream cone in the park on Saturday afternoon, can make
do with less certainty than can T. If T tells S that the bank is open
tomorrow, then, assuming other factors work out, T could presumably
pass along his between-ice-cream-cone-and-mob-repayment-level
certainty to S. That amount of certainty would be enough for S to come
to know, though it wasn't enough for T. Put abstractly, T might
properly tell S that p, aware knowing that, given S's stakes, S only
needs a relatively low amount of Grahamian pro tanto justification, or
relatively Plantingian little warrant, in order for S to know, even
though T himself might be in a much higher stakes situation, and so
would not have enough justification to know that p. On this sort of
view, T may assert that p if T has enough certainty for his audience's
needs, but which might not be enough for T's own. (See Green
2006:142.)
Denying the Hawthorne-Stanley interest-sensitive view of knowledge is,
of course, one easy way to resist this sort of counterexample. Another
way to defend knowledge-preservationism against such an attack is to
insist that asserter's knowledge is the norm of assertion: T should
only assert that p if he has enough certainty for T's own needs. The
idea might be that S, hearing T say that p, will assume that T has
enough evidence for himself, and would normally be shocked and
disturbed were he to learn that T thought that his evidence was
insufficient for T's own purposes, but passed along the statement that
p anyway. Likewise, we might be attracted to the intuition that a
low-stakes T, with enough certainty that p for his own purposes,
should have every right to assert that p, no matter the audience (for
instance, by asserting that p on the internet, where anyone might read
it, including a high-stakes S).
iv. False Testimony
Goldberg 2001 presents a case where T testifies falsely, but S still
gains testimonially-based knowledge. T tells S that q: "T saw Jones
wearing a pink shirt last night at the party." But S knows that Jones
was out of town last night, and so decides that T must have mistaken
someone else for Jones. So S instead believes p: "T saw someone
wearing a pink shirt last night at the party."
The knowledge-preservationist might respond with a combination of the
Knowing-T and Not-Testimony responses. T does, of course, also believe
p, that he saw someone with a pink shirt. Did he tell S that? If so,
then T told S that p, and spoke truly and knowingly. If, however, we
regard T as not telling S that p, but only that q, it seems plausible
to say that S actually inferred that p from T's testimony that q (and
in a manner unlike the way that conservatives, discussed above, argue
that inference is involved in ordinary testimonially-based beliefs).
So the knowledge-preservationist can argue that either T knew and
testified that p, in which case the example has door-#2 problems, or
else T didn't tell S that p, in which case the example has door-#3
problems.
v. Reconceptualization from T to S
Green 2006:30 discusses an instance where T conceptualizes the object
of belief differently than does S. T tells S that some object m is F,
not knowing that object m is the same as object n. S knows that m is n
and does not distinguish the two, and so believes that n is F. But T
didn't know that. For instance, Lois Lane knows that Superman is Clark
Kent, but Jimmy Olsen does not. Jimmy tells Lois that Clark's favorite
ice cream flavor is chocolate, and Lois now knows Superman's favorite
ice cream flavor, which Jimmy did not. We might stipulate that Lois
does not know that Jimmy distinguishes Clark and Superman; Jimmy tells
her something about Clark, and Lois just assimilates that information
into a single "Clark/Superman" file.
The knowledge-preservationist might argue, as in the reply to
Goldberg's case above, that S's belief is either inferentially-based,
or that T somehow did tell S that n is F. However, it seems plain that
T, not knowing that n is m, or perhaps not knowing about n at all,
could not know that n is F—Jimmy did not know that Clark was Superman,
and he wasn't talking about Superman. So the Knowing T response seems
blocked. Could this case be seen as inferentially-based, rather than
testimonially-based? Here, unlike in Goldberg's case, S may not even
be conscious that he is conceiving of the object differently than T.
In the Jones-wasn't-there case, though, S explicitly modifies T's
statement that p, because he knows why q is the more reasonable belief
to form. Because differences between how T and S conceptualize the
object of their beliefs may not be noticed, there is stronger ground
for saying that the presence of such a difference would not prevent
S's beliefs from being testimonially-based. However, if S's belief
that m is F is receiving epistemic benefits from his background
knowledge that n is m, then there may be some plausibility in saying
that S's belief is somehow based in part on that knowledge, even if it
is non-inferential. Lois is utilizing, even unwittingly and
unconsciously, her knowledge that Clark is Superman. (Cf. Heck 1995:99
("[O]ne can not come to know things about George Orwell from
assertions containing 'Eric Blair.'").
vi. Unreliable Testimony
Goldberg 2005 presents a case where even unreliable testimony produces
testimonially-based knowledge. T sees evidence that p which is usually
misleading, but is luckily not misleading on this occasion—in
Goldberg's example, the evidence is an opaque carton of milk which A,
an eccentric writer, usually replaces each morning with an empty
carton, but A forgot this morning; p is "there is milk in the fridge."
T tells S that p, an observer of the testimony, A, is nearby, and
would have corrected T's testimony had it been incorrect. S's belief
is, Goldberg thinks, safe, because A's presence would have prevented
T's false testimony from being believed, but T's testimony itself is
unsafe, because it is based on evidence that, in the circumstances, is
usually misleading.
The Not-Testimony response is an option here. Even though S's belief
is formed in response to T telling him that p, an essential part of
S's belief-sustaining environment is A's safety-guaranteeing presence.
Goldberg (at 308) gives his defense of S's knowledge by considering a
case in which S knows about A's role. It seems quite plausible that in
that case, S is not relying solely on T, but on the T-in-A's-presence
hybrid. In the case where S does not know that A is guaranteeing the
reliability of his belief that p, Goldberg still thinks that S knows
that p—A's guaranteeing function alone, and not S's explicit reliance
on that function, is enough. It might seem a bit odd to suggest that
S's belief is not testimonially-based, when S herself has no other
conscious basis for her belief than the fact that T told her that p.
However, if, unknown to S, S's belief receives epistemic benefits
because on A's guaranteeing function, it is also seems possible for
S's belief to be differently based because of A's guaranteeing
function. The actual reason why S has the belief she has is partly T,
and partly A. If we understand the case this way, Goldberg's case is a
case where beliefs partly based on defective testimony can amount to
knowledge, precisely because the other part of the basis of that
belief cures the defect in the testimony.
Knowing T—the response that T herself knows that p, and in fact that
her testimony is reliable—is also a possibility, if we pay close
attention to T's belief and testimony over time. Suppose T tells S
that p at time t, and that it would take A at least time Δt to correct
T's testimony, had it in fact been false. If S believes T
straightaway, then at time t, before A's correction mechanism could
have worked in any event, it does not seem right to say that S's
belief is safe. Only after A has had a chance to correct the
testimony, but has not, would S's belief amount to knowledge. S's
belief at time t+Δt may be knowledge, but not his belief at time t.
But what about T? T's belief that p is unreliable at time t, and so is
his testimony that p, because it was based on evidence that is usually
misleading. But at time t+Δt, T has as much right as S to rely on A's
failure to correct the testimony that p. So at time t+Δt, T also knows
that p. We could say the very same thing about T's testimony: it is
unsafe and unreliable at time t, but at time t+Δt, it is itself safe
and reliable—or at least as safe and reliable as S's belief based upon
it. In other words, T and S are ignorant, and T's testimony
unreliable, at time t, but T and S know that p, and T's testimony is
reliable, at time t+Δt.
Goldberg 2007:322ff. discusses a similar case in which S receives
clues about T's reliability in addition to T's testimony itself. Due
to wishful thinking, T always believes that the Yankees have won, and
always says so. Sometimes, however, the Yankees do win, and T reads so
in the newspaper. When T's belief is based on wishful thinking, he
displays tell-tale signs, such as failing to look S in the eye, which
would lead S not to believe him. When T's belief is based on genuine
information that the Yankees won, these signs are absent, and S would
believe him. As a result, Goldberg says that S's belief in the
Yankees-actually-won case is safe and should count as knowledge, even
though T's belief is not. The Not-Testimony response is again
possible: S's belief is based not on T's testimony alone, but on the
signs that would indicate unreliability.
Graham 2000b:371ff. discusses a similar case. T has trouble
distinguishing two twins, A and B, but S does not. T tells S that A
knocked over a vase, and S knows that B could not have done it. T's
testimony is unreliable, because T cannot tell A from B, and B might
as easily have knocked over the vase. The Not-Testimony response is
somewhat plausible here: S's belief is not based simply on T's
testimony, but also on his knowledge that B did not knock over the
vase. As with Goldberg's case, S may not be aware of the fact that T
is unreliable, and so may not be aware of the contribution of S's
additional knowledge about B in sustaining S's belief about A knocking
over the vase. But also as in Goldberg's case, there is some reason to
think that if an additional source provides epistemic benefits to S's
belief, it can also make a difference in the basis for S's belief,
albeit a difference of which S may be unaware.
4. Some Brief Notes on Other Issues
As noted above, the S-side and T-side questions are far from an
exhaustive map of the important issues in the epistemology of
testimony. This section does not give a full map of other issues, but
notes two particularly prominent ones.
a. Connections between S-side and T-side issues
One interesting issue is the extent to which the two main issues
discussed above are related. Some philosophers connect their views on
the internal and external questions, but they do so in both
directions. For instance, Fricker 2006b:603 argues that
knowledge-preservationism regarding testimonial knowledge fits best
with a relatively demanding approach to testimonial justification in
which S has a second-order belief about T's knowledge:
When the hearer [S] … believes [T] because she takes his speech at
face value, as an expression of knowledge, then … [S]'s belief in what
she is told is grounded in her belief that T knows what he asserted. …
Several writers have endorsed the principle that a recipient of
testimony can come to know what is testified to only if the testifier
knows whereof she speaks. In my account this fact is … derived from a
description of the speech act of telling….
On the other hand, Dummett 1994:264 suggests that
knowledge-preservationism fits best with a less demanding approach,
because it suggests a strong analogy with memory:
In the case of testimony … if the concept of knowledge is to be of
any use at all, and if we are to be held to know anything resembling
the body of truths we normally take ourselves to know, the
non-inferential character of our acceptance of what others tell us
must be acknowledged as an epistemological principle, rather than a
mere psychological phenomenon. Testimony should not be regarded as a
source, and still less as a ground, for knowledge: it is the
transmission from one individual to another of knowledge acquired by
whatever means.
Among thinkers who have considered both issues in detail, all four
possible sorts of view are represented.
Conditions on Testifier for Testimonially-Based Knowledge
(T-side issues)
Relatively more demanding (Knowledge-Preservationism) Relatively less
demanding (Anti-Knowledge-Preservationism)
Conditions on Recipient for Testimonially-Based Justification (S-side
issues) Relatively more demanding (Reductionism) Audi
Fricker Lackey
Relatively less demanding (Anti-Reductionism) Burge
Dummett
Plantinga
Ross
Welbourne Goldberg
Graham
Green
b. The Nature of Testimony
An extensive literature exists on the general nature of the epistemic
relationship between the testifier T and our epistemic subject S. For
instance, Reid 1785 says that testimony is distinguished by S relying
on T's authority for the proposition that p. Goldberg 2006 says that
forming a testimonially-based belief allows S (in the right
conditions) to "pass the epistemic buck" to T. Moran 2006, Watson
2004, Hinchman 2007, Ross 1986, Fried 1978, and Austin 1946 all
promote variants of the view that in testifying, T is offering an
assurance to S that p is true, akin to a promise. Schmitt 2006 says
that testimonially-based beliefs involve "transindividual reasons,"
such that T's initial reasons are transferred to S, though S may not
comprehend what they are. (Related to Schmitt's view on this issue is
the large question, unfortunately beyond the scope of this article at
this time, of whether testimony requires an irreducibly social account
of epistemology. For an introduction to some of these issues, see the
articles in Schmitt 1994.) Green 2006 says that testimonial
relationships are a form of epistemic agency, such that T's actions on
S's behalf should be considered the action of S's agent, and so
subject to the legal maxim qui facit per alium, facit per se (he who
acts through another acts himself).
One issue is whether these views really compete with one another.
These characterizations might conceivably all be true: in testifying,
T might be giving an assurance, thereby offering to serve as an
epistemic agent, thereby transferring his reasons to S, and allowing S
to rely on T's authority and pass the epistemic buck to him.
Related to the general characterization of the testimonial link
between T and S is what counts as "testimony." For instance, Graham
1997 defends a relatively broad characterization of testimony. He
argues that T testifies if his statement that p is offered as evidence
that p. He criticizes Coady 1992, who holds that T testifies only if
he actually has the relevant competence and T's statement that p is
directed to those in need of evidence, for whom p is relevant to some
disputed or unresolved question. Lackey 2006b defends a hybrid view of
testimony, distinguishing "hearer testimony" from "speaker testimony."
The former takes place if latter takes place if T reasonably intends
to convey the information that p in virtue of the communicable content
of an act of communication, while the latter takes place if S
reasonably takes T's act of communication as conveying the information
that p in virtue of the communicable content of an act of
communication.
5. References and Further Reading
* Adler, Jonathan E., 1994. "Testimony, Trust, Knowing," Journal
of Philosophy 9:264-75.
* Adler, Jonathan E., 2002. Belief's Own Ethics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
* Audi, Robert, 1997. "The Place of Testimony in the Fabric of
Knowledge and Justification," American Philosophical Quarterly
34:405-22.
* Audi, Robert, 2002. "The Sources of Belief," in Paul Moser, ed.,
Oxford Handbook of Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Audi, Robert, 2004. "The A Priori Authority of Testimony,"
Philosophical Issues 14:18-34.
* Audi, Robert, 2006. "Testimony, Credulity, and Veracity," in
Lackey and Sosa 2006.
* Audi, Robert, 2006. "Testimony, Credulity, and Veracity," in
Lackey and Sosa 2006.
* Austin, J.L., 1946. "Other Minds," in Philosophical Papers, 3rd
ed., 1979. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Bergmann, Michael, 2006a. "BonJour's Dilemma," Philosophical
Studies 131:679-693.
* Bergmann, Michael, 2006b. Justification Without Awareness: A
Defense of Epistemic Externalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* BonJour, Laurence, 1980. "Externalist Theories of Empirical
Knowledge," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5:53-73.
* BonJour, Laurence, 2003. "A Version of Internalist
Foundationalism," in Laurence BonJour and Ernest Sosa, Epistemic
Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues.
Blackwell Publishing.
* Burge, Tyler, 1993. "Content Preservation." Philosophical Review
102:457-488.
* Burge, Tyler, 1997. "Interlocution, Perception, Memory,"
Philosophical Studies 86:21-47.
* Burge, Tyler, 1999. "Comprehension and Interpretation," in L.
Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. LaSalle: Open Court.
* Coady, C.A.J., 1973. "Testimony and Observation." American
Philosophical Quarterly 10:149-155.
* Coady, C.A.J., 1992. Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
* Coady, C.A.J., 1994. "Testimony, Observation, and 'Autonomous
Knowledge," in Matilal and Chakrabarti 1994.
* Dummett, Michael. "Testimony and Memory," in Matilal and Chakrabarti 1994.
* Evans, Gareth, 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Faulkner, Paul, 2000. "The Social Character of Testimonial
Knowledge," Journal of Philosophy 97:581-601.
* Foley, Richard, 1994. "Egoism in Epistemology," in Frederick F.
Schmitt, Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge.
Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
* Foley, Richard, 2001. Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 1987. "The Epistemology of Testimony,"
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplement 61:57-83.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 1994. "Against Gullibility," in Matilal and
Chakrabarti 1994.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 1995. "Telling and Trusting: Reductionism
and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony," Mind
104:393-411 (critical notice of Coady 1992).
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 2002. "Trusting Others in the Sciences: a
priori or Empirical Warrant?", Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science 33:373-83.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 2004. "Testimony: Knowing Through Being
Told," in I. Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen, and J. Wolenski, eds.,
Handbok of Epistemology. New York: Springer.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 2006a. "Testimony and Epistemic Autonomy,"
in Lackey and Sosa 2006.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 2006b. "Second-Hand Knowledge." Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 73:592-618.
* Fricker, Elizabeth, 2006c. "Varieties of Anti-Reductionism About
Testimony—A Reply to Goldberg and Henderson," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 72:618-28.
* Gettier, Edmund, 1963. "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"
Analysis 23:121-123.
* Goldberg, Sanford, 2001. "Testimonially Based Knowledge From
False Testimony." The Philosophical Quarterly 51:512-526.
* Goldberg, Sanford, 2005. "Testimonial Knowledge Through Unsafe
Testimony." Analysis 65:302-311.
* Goldberg, Sanford, 2006. "Reductionism and the Distinctiveness
of Testimonial Knowledge," in Lackey and Sosa 2006.
* Goldberg, Sanford, 2007. "How Lucky Can You Get?" Synthese 158:315-327.
* Goldberg, Sanford, 2008. "Testimonial Knowledge in Early
Childhood, Revisited." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
76:1-36.
* Goldberg, Sanford, and Henderson, David, 2005. "Monitoring and
Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 72:600-17.
* Goldman, Alvin, 1999. Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
* Graham, Peter J., 1997. "What is Testimony?," The Philosophical
Quarterly 47: 227-232.
* Graham, Peter J., 2000a. "Transferring Knowledge," Noûs 34:131–152.
* Graham, Peter J., 2000b. "Conveying Information," Synthese 123:365-392.
* Graham, Peter J., 2000c. "The Reliability of Testimony,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61:695-709.
* Graham, Peter J., 2004. "Metaphysical Libertarianism and the
Epistemology of Testimony," American Philosophical Quarterly 41:37-50.
* Graham, Peter J., 2006. "Liberal Fundamentalism and Its Rivals,"
in Lackey and Sosa 2006.
o Graham 2006:93 gives similar, but not identical, lists of
supporters of direct and non-direct views of testimony. Graham lists
as supporting a direct view Burge 1993, 1997, and 1999, Coady 1973 and
1992, Dummett 1994, Goldberg 2006, McDowell 1994, Quinton 1973, Reid
1764, Ross 1986, Rysiew 2000, Stevenson 1993, Strawson 1994, and
Weiner 2003a. Graham lists as supporting a non-direct view Adler 2002,
Audi 1997, 2002, 2004, and 2006, Hume 1739, Kusch 2002, Lackey 2003
and 2006, Lehrer 1994, Lyons 1997, Faulkner 2000, Fricker 1987, 1994,
1995, 2002, and 2006a, and Root 1998 and 2001.
* Green, Christopher R., 2006. The Epistemic Parity of Testimony,
Memory, and Perception. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame.
* Green, Christopher R., 2007. "Suing One's Sense Faculties for
Fraud: 'Justifiable Reliance' in the Law as a Clue to Epistemic
Justification," Philosophical Papers 36:49-90.
* Hardwig, John, 1985. "Epistemic Dependence," Journal of
Philosophy 82:335-49.
* Hardwig, John, 1991. "The Role of Trust in Knowledge," Journal
of Philosophy 88:693-708.
* Hawthorne, John, 2004. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
* Heck, Richard, 1995. "The Sense of Communication." Mind 104:79-106.
* Hinchman, Edward, 2005. "Telling as Inviting to Trust,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70:562-87.
* Hinchman, Edward, 2007. "The Assurance of Warrant." Unpublished manuscript
* Hume, David, 1739. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1888 edition,
L.A. Selby-Bigge, ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Hume, David, 1748. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
1977 edition, Indiannapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
* Insole, Christopher J., 2000. "Seeing Off the Local Threat to
Irreducible Knowledge by Testimony." Philosophical Quarterly 50:44-56.
* Kusch, Martin, 2002. Knowledge by Agreement. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
* Lackey, Jennifer, 1999. "Testimonial Knowledge and
Transmission," The Philosophical Quarterly 49:471-490.
* Lackey, Jennifer, 2003. "A Minimal Expression of
Non-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony," Noûs 37:706-23.
* Lackey, Jennifer, 2005. "Testimony and the Infant/Child
Objection," Philosophical Studies 126:163-90.
* Lackey, Jennifer, 2006a. "It Takes Two to Tango: Beyond
Reductionism and Non-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony,"
in Lackey and Sosa 2006.
* Lackey, Jennifer, 2006b. "The Nature of Testimony," Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 87:177-97.
* Lackey, Jennifer, 2006c. "Learning From Words." Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 73:77-101.
* Lackey, Jennifer, and Ernest Sosa, eds., 2006. The Epistemology
of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
o Lackey gives lists of testimonial reductionists (at 183
n.3) and non-reductionists (at 186 n.19). Lackey lists as supporting
forms of non-reductionism Austin 1946, Welbourne 1979, 1981, 1986, and
1994, Evans 1982, Ross 1986, Hardwig 1985 and 1991, Coady 1992 and
1994, Reid 1764, Burge 1993 and 1997, Plantinga 1993, Webb 1993,
Dummett 1994, Foley 1994, McDowell 1994, Strawson 1994, Williamson
1996 and 2000, Goldman 1999, Schmitt 1999, Insole 2000, Owens 2000,
Rysiew 2002, Weiner 2003a, and Goldberg 2006. Lackey lists as
supporting forms of reductionism Hume 1739, Fricker 1987, 1994, 1995,
and 2006a, Adler 1994 and 2002, Lyons 1997, Lipton 1998, and Van Cleve
2006. Lackey 2006 lists as preservationists (that is,
T-must-know-that-p-ists) Welbourne 1979, 1981, and 1994, Hardwig 1985
and 1991, Ross 1986, Burge 1993 and 1997, Plantinga 1993, McDowell
1994, Williamson 1996, Audi 1997, Owens 2000, and Dummett 1994.
Fricker 2006a is a recent addition to the preservationist camp.
* Lehrer, Keith, 1994. "Testimony and Coherence," in Matilal and
Chakrabarti 1994.
* Lipton, Peter, 1998. "The Epistemology of Testimony," British
Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 29:1-31.
* Lyons, Jack, 1997. "Testimony, Induction, and Folk Psychology,"
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75:163-78.
* Matilal, Bimal Krishna, and Chakrabarti, Arindam, 1994. Knowing
From Words: Western and Indian Philosophical Analysis of Understanding
and Testimony. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
* McDowell, John, 1998. "Knowledge By Hearsay," in Matilal and
Chakrabarti 1994.
* Moran, Richard, 2006. "Getting Told and Being Believed," in
Lackey and Sosa 2006.
* Owens, David, 2000. Reason Without Freedom: The Problem of
Epistemic Normativity. London: Routledge.
* Plantinga, Alvin, 1993. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
* Quinton, Anthony, 1973. "Autonomy and Authority in Knowledge,"
in Thoughts and Thinkers. London: Duckworth.
* Reid, Thomas, 1764. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the
Principles of Common Sense. Excerpts in 1975 edition, Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company.
* Reid, Thomas, 1785. Articles on the Intellectual Powers of Man.
Excerpts in 1975 edition, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
* Root, Michael, 1998. "How to Teach a Wise Man," in Kenneth
Westphal, ed., Pragmatism, Reason, and Norms. New York: Fordham
University
* Root, Michael 2001. "Hume on the Virtues of Testimony," American
Philosophical Quarterly 38:19-35.
* Ross, Angus, 1986. "Why Believe What We Are Told?" Ratio 28:69-88.
* Rysiew, Patrick, 2000. "Testimony, Simulation, and the Limits of
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