Epistemology of Testimony - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Epistemology of Testimony | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Epistemology of Testimony | Internet

Encyclopedia of Philosophy
91-116 minutos
We get a great number of our beliefs from what others tell us.
The 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

person T, our testifier, says p to person 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 issues.
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Table of Contents
1. Some Terminology, Abbreviations, and Caveats
2. Recipient (S)-Side Questions

1. Characterizing the Debate
2. Arguments in Favor of Demands on Testimonially-Based Beliefs

1. T’s Ability to Deceive
2. Individual Counterexamples and Intuitions about Irresponsibility

and Gullibility
3. S’s Ability Not to Trust T
4. Operational Dependence on Other Sources
5. Defeasibility of Testimonially-Based Beliefs by Other Sources
6. From a No-Defeater Condition to Positive-Reason-to-Believe

Condition
7. S’s Higher-Order Beliefs About T
3. Arguments Against Demands on Testimonially-Based Beliefs

1. Insufficient Inductive Base
2. Analogies to Perception
3. Analogies to Memory
4. Skepticism about Over-Intellectualization and Young Children
5. The Assurance View as a Basis for Lessened Demands on S
4. A Priori Reasons in Support of Testimonially-Based Beliefs

1. Coady’s Davidsonian Argument from the Comprehensibility of
Testimony
2. Burge’s Argument from Intelligible Presentation
3. Graham’s A Priori Necessary Conceptual Intuitions
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3. Testifier (T)-Side Questions: Testimony and the Preservation of

Knowledge
1. Background
2. The Cases
1. Untransmitted Defeaters
2. Zombie Testifiers
3. High-Stakes T, Low-Stakes S
4. False Testimony
5. Reconceptualization from T to S
6. Unreliable Testimony
4. Some Brief Notes on Other Issues

1. Connections between S-side and T-side issues
2. The Nature of Testimony
5. References and Further Reading
1. Some Terminology, Abbreviations, and Caveats
This article considers the epistemology of testimonially-based

belief. Let’s unpack that phrase. 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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analogy, this article will simply consider arguments in favor of a

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
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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

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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
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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 to 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
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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 is 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’s presumptive right to trust T, she argues, must dispense with
any duty in S to monitor T for signs of untrustworthiness.
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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

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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:
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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,
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“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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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 be 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
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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 presumably 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
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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. …
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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
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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
Tyler Burge in (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 a priori entitled to accept something that is prima facie

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intelligible and presented as true. For prima facie intelligible

propositional contents prima facie presented as true bear an a
priori 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 a priori 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
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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 it 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
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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:
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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.
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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 meal 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”
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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
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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
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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 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
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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.
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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:
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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 Relatively less

demanding demanding
(Knowledge- (Anti-
Preservationism) Knowledge-
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Preservationism)
Conditions Relatively Audi Lackey

on Recipient more Fricker
for demanding
Testimonially- (Reductionism)
Based
Relatively less Burge Goldberg
Justification
demanding Dummett Graham
(S-side
(Anti- Plantinga Green
issues)
Reductionism) Ross
Welbourne
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
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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 the 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.
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• 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

• 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.
52 of 61
• 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.
53 of 61
• 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

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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,”
• 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,”

• 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.
• 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.
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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,”

• 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
56 of 61
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

• 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.
• 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,
57 of 61
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

• Owens, David, 2000. Reason Without Freedom: The Problem of

Epistemic Normativity. London: Routledge.
• Plantinga, Alvin, 1993. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford:

58 of 61
• 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

Inductivism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78:269-274.
• Schmitt, Frederick F., ed., 1994. Socializing Epistemology.

Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Schmitt, Frederick F., 1999. “Social Epistemology,” in John

Greco and Ernest Sosa, The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Schmitt, Frederick F., 2006. “Testimonial Justification and

Transindividual Reasons,” in Lackey and Sosa 2006.
• Shogenj, Tomoji, 2000. “Self-Dependent Justification Without

Circularity,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51:
59 of 61
287-98.
• Shogenj, Tomoji, 2006. “A Defense of Reductionism about

Testimonial Justification of Beliefs,” Noûs 40: 331-46.
• Stanley, Jason, 2005. Knowledge and Practical Interests.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Stevenson, Leslie, 1993. “Why Believe What People Say?”

Synthese 94:429-51.
• Strawson, P.F., 1994. “Knowing From Words,” in Matilal and

Chakrabarti 1994.
• Van Cleve, James, 2006. “Reid on the Credit of Human

Testimony,” in Lackey and Sosa 2006.
• Webb, Mark Owen, 1993. “Why I Know About As Much As You:

A Reply to Hardwig,” Journal of Philosophy 90:260-70.
• Weiner, Matthew, 2003a. “Accepting Testimony,” Philosophical

Quarterly 53:256-64.
• Weiner, Matthew, 2003b. “The Assurance View of Testimony.”

Unpublished manuscript, available at http://mattweiner.net
/papers/weiner_assurance_view.pdf.
• Welbourne, Michael, 1979. “The Transmission of Knowledge,”

• Welbourne, Michael, 1981. “The Community of Knowledge,”

• Welbourne, Michael, 1986. The Community of Knowledge.

Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
• Welbourne, Michael, 1994. “Testimony, Knowledge, and Belief,”

in Matilal and Chakrabarti 1994.
60 of 61
• Williamson, Timothy, 1996. “Knowing and Asserting,”

Philosophical Review 105:489-523.
• Williamson, Timothy, 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford:

Author Information
Christopher R. Green
Email: crgreen@olemiss.edu
University of Mississippi
U. S. A.
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Epistemology of Testimony | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Epistemology of Testimony | Internet

When someone tells us p, where p is some statement, and we

For our basic case of testimonially-based belief, let us say that

1. Some Terminology, Abbreviations, and Caveats

2. Recipient (S)-Side Questions

2. Arguments in Favor of Demands on Testimonially-Based Beliefs

2. Individual Counterexamples and Intuitions about Irresponsibility

3. S’s Ability Not to Trust T

4. Operational Dependence on Other Sources

5. Defeasibility of Testimonially-Based Beliefs by Other Sources

6. From a No-Defeater Condition to Positive-Reason-to-Believe

7. S’s Higher-Order Beliefs About T

3. Arguments Against Demands on Testimonially-Based Beliefs

4. Skepticism about Over-Intellectualization and Young Children

5. The Assurance View as a Basis for Lessened Demands on S

4. A Priori Reasons in Support of Testimonially-Based Beliefs

2. Burge’s Argument from Intelligible Presentation

3. Graham’s A Priori Necessary Conceptual Intuitions

3. Testiﬁer (T)-Side Questions: Testimony and the Preservation of

4. Some Brief Notes on Other Issues

2. The Nature of Testimony

5. References and Further Reading

1. Some Terminology, Abbreviations, and Caveats

This article considers the epistemology of testimonially-based

about our breakfast. And when someone tells us that p, and we

It will be helpful to use the same terminology throughout this

Now, the epistemology of a belief is a particular sort of

One way to speak of the epistemology of testimonially-based

Many of the contemporary disputes in the epistemology of

on testimonially-based belief related to the recipient, S. (To

A second area involves the external conditions on the testiﬁer, T,

This article will ﬁrst survey arguments related to S-side issues,

As noted in the ﬁnal section of this article, there are some

is frequently whether a proposed counterexample counts as

This article focuses chieﬂy on the epistemology of testimony in

2. Recipient (S)-Side Questions

a. Characterizing the Debate

The most prominent debate in the epistemology of testimony is

veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts

Reid, however, argued that children properly trust others even

The reducibility of testimonially-based justiﬁcation is thus one

reliability of a present bit of testimony from the reliability of

2. T, or people like T, have generally been reliable in the past

3. T is probably reliable on this occasion; so

The non-inferentialist sees testimony as less like an invitation to

(Audi 1997 helpfully distinguishes between hypothetical and

Lackey 2006a gives relatively full recent lists of the adversaries

A third way to characterize disputes over testimonially-based

reductionist tradition sees strong disanalogies, while the

None of these formulations captures contemporary debates

Rather than characterizing the internal dispute solely in terms of

analogy, this article will simply consider arguments in favor of a

The usage of “liberal” and “conservative” here has a kinship with

Some philosophers place demands on testimonially-based

instance, Audi 1997 is relatively demanding regarding

Finally for preliminaries, we should distinguish arguments about