Reconsidering the role of inference to the best explanation in

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.

Mind, 2007

The assumption that we largely lack reasons for accepting testimony has dominated its epistemology. Given the further assumption that whatever reasons we do have are insufficient to justify our testimonial beliefs, many conclude that any account of testimonial knowledge must allow credulity to be justified. In this paper I argue that both of these assumptions are false. Our responses to testimony are guided by our background beliefs as to the testimony as a type, the testimonial situation, the testifier's character and the truth of the proposition testified to. These beliefs provide reasons for our responses. Thus, we usually do have reasons, in the sense of propositions believed, for accepting testimony and these reasons can provide evidence for the testimonial beliefs we form.

History and Theory, 1994

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

It is natural to suppose that a reason of the form that so-and-so said that p can be (among) one’s reason(s) for believing that p. Let us call reasons of this kind “testimonial reasons.” There are at least two fundamental questions we can ask about the nature of testimonial reasons. First, what is the nature and strength of these reasons? This is a question at the heart of the epistemology of testimony literature. Second, what is/are the mechanism(s) by which testimonial reasons are generated? This is a question at the intersection of philosophy of language and epistemology, as the mechanisms in question might pertain to the speaker’s testimony, the hearer’s apprehension of that testimony, or some combination of the two. In this chapter I propose to address both of these questions.

Philosophical Issues, 2004

Nous, 2008

2005

Abstract This paper develops a descriptive and normative account of how people respond to testimony. It postulates a default pathway in which people more or less automatically respond to a claim by accepting it, as long as the claim made is consistent with their beliefs and the source is credible. Otherwise, people enter a reflective pathway in which they evaluate the claim based on its explanatory coherence with everything else they believe.

to appear in Beran, Kolman, Koren (eds.), From Rules to Meanings: New Essays on Inferentialism, Routledge.

This paper focuses on the connection between inferentialist philosophy and inferentialism in the epistemology of testimony. In contemporary epistemology there is a debate between inferentialists and anti-inferentialists; inferentialists argue that the adoption of a testimonial belief is the result of an inferential process in which the premises include beliefs about the testifier's trustworthiness. This paper defends the view that if assertions are testimonies, the best candidate for a theory of assertion is a normative theory, particularly a theory held by inferentialist philosophers in which assertions come with certain commitments. A Brandomian inferentialist need not be an inferentialist in the epistemology of testimony, who has a skeptical attitude and who searches for inferential justification for the testifier's competence or sincerity in order to believe what the speaker claims. However, this paper argues that the normative attitude emphasized by Robert Brandom and Jaroslav Peregrin and the evaluative attitude towards the testifier are related. By utilizing Gottlob Frege's and W.V. Quine's semantic views, it elaborates the idea that the adoption of a testimonial belief involves the recipient's seeing the testifier as a certain kind of person; still, the evaluative attitude towards the testifier need not generate an explicit premise into the inferential chain.