On Testimony and Transmission

Episteme, 2007

I present an account of what it is to trust a speaker, and argue that the account can explain the common intuitions which structure the debate about the transmission view of testimony. According to the suggested account, to trust a speaker is to grant her epistemic authority on the asserted proposition, and hence to see her opinion as issuing a second order, preemptive reason for believing the proposition. The account explains the intuitive appeal of the basic principle associated with the transmission view of testimony: the principle according to which, a listener can normally obtain testimonial knowledge that p by believing a speaker who testifies that p only if the speaker knows that p. It also explains a common response to counterexamples to this principle: that these counterexamples do not involve normal cases of testimonial knowledge.

2013

This paper intends to show that the decision of defending understanding as one of the major goals of science education can be grounded on an anti-reductionist perspective on testimony as a source of knowledge. To do so, we revisit the discussion between Harvey Siegel and Alvin Goldman about the goals of science education, showing some limitations in the arguments involved in it that are grounded on an epistemology of testimony. Subsequently, we come back to a discussion between one of the authors (with Eduardo Mortimer) and Michael Hoffmann, striving to strengthen the claim that rather than students’ belief change, understanding should have epistemically priority as a goal of science education. Based on these two lines of discussion, we conclude that the reliance on testimony as a source of knowledge is necessary to the development of a rational scientific understanding by science students.

According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the success of these attempts, yet argues that refuting the evolutionary sceptic is not enough to put any particular domain of beliefs – notably scientific beliefs, which include belief in Darwinian evolution – on a firm footing. The paper thus sets out to contribute to this positive justificatory project, underdeveloped in the literature. In contrast to a “wholesale” approach, attempting to secure justification for all of our beliefs on the grounds that our belief-forming mechanisms evolved to track truth, we propose a “piecemeal” approach of assessing the reliability of particular belief-forming mechanisms in particular domains. This stands in contrast to the more familiar attempt to transfer warrant obtained for one domain (e.g. common sense beliefs) to another (e.g. scientific beliefs) by showing how one is somehow an extension of the other. We offer a naturalist reply to the charge of circularity by appealing to reliabilist work on the problem of induction, notably Peter Lipton’s distinction between self-certifying and non-self-certifying inductive arguments. We show how, for scientific beliefs, a non-self-certifying argument might be made for the reliability of our cognitive faculties in that domain. We call this strategy Humean Bootstrapping,

2008

What does it make social epistemology “social”? What does it make social epistemology “epistemological”? What is testimony? In this paper, I propose to consider to what extent these questions are related, and how the answer to the third one could shed some light on the nature of social epistemology. As it is well known, much of our knowledge is obtained from others simply by attending to their actions and words. Certainly, the most part of this knowledge, I will claim, is acquired from instrumental grounds and not by testimony. For example, when I meet a tourist asking for the Prado Museum, I obtain the knowledge that she has some competence in Spanish without mediating a testimonial act. Nevertheless, part of the knowledge acquired from others issubstantively testimonial, as for example when, while foraging wild mushrooms, I inquire: “Is this a dangerous one?”, and receive the answer: “No, this is an Amanita Cesarea, you can eat it safely”. This is a case of non-instrumental testim...

In his work on the epistemology of testimony, Peter Lipton developed an account of testimonial inference that aimed at descriptive adequacy as well as justificatory sophistication. According to ‘testimonial inference to the best explanation’ (TIBE), we accept what a speaker tells us because the truth of her claim figures in the best explanation of the fact that she made it. In the present paper, I argue for a modification of this picture. In particular, I argue that IBE plays a dual role in the management and justification of testimony. On the one hand, the coherence and success of our testimony-based projects provides general abductive support for a default stance of testimonial acceptance; on the other hand, we are justified in rejecting specific testimonial claims whenever the best explanation of the instances of testimony we encounter entails, or makes probable, the falsity or unreliability of the testimony in question.

Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts, 2019

Much of what we regard ourselves as knowing came to us from the testimony of others. But recently epistemologists have debated just how testimony can be a source of knowledge at all. Must we have some independent way to confirm what we receive through testimony, or is there perhaps some reason why we should suppose that testimony is all by itself an adequate source of knowledge? This problem, I claim, is actually a version of a much older and better known problem: the so-called problem of the criterion. I will first explain this other, older, problem, and lay out the available options for solving it. I will then show why I think the problem of testimony is simply a version of the problem of the criterion. I will conclude by arguing that the best way to solve these problems comes from a theory of justification that few epistemologists seem to support these days: holistic coherence theory. In doing so, I hope I will provide some powerful new reasons for reconsidering this theory of justification. 1

Transmission views of testimony hold that the epistemic state of a speaker can, in some robust sense, be transmitted to their audience. That is, the speaker's knowledge or justification can become the audience's knowledge or justification via testimony. We argue that transmission views are incompatible with the hypothesis that one's epistemic state, together with one's practical circumstances (one's interests, stakes, ability to acquire new evidence etc.), determines what actions are rationally permissible for an agent. We argue that there are cases where, if the speaker's epistemic state were (in any robust sense) transmitted to the audience, then the audience would be warranted in acting in particular ways. Yet, the audience in these cases is not warranted in acting in the relevant ways, as their strength of justification does not come close to the speaker's. So transmission views of testimony are false.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2011

Testimony is the mainstay of human communication and essential for the spread of knowledge. But testimony may also spread error. Under what conditions does it yield knowledge in the person addressed? Must the recipient trust the attester? And does the attester have to know what is affirmed? A related question is what is required for the recipient to be justified in believing testimony. Is testimony-based justification acquired in the same way as testimony-based knowledge? This paper addresses these and other questions. It offers a theory of the role of testimony in producing knowledge and justification, a sketch of a conception of knowledge that supports this theory, a brief account of how trust of others can be squared with critical habits of mind, and an outline of some important standards for intellectual responsibility in giving and receiving testimony. 1 The suggested broad notion of testimony seems to be the one many use; see, e.g.,