Testimonial knowledge and transmission

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 49, Issue 197, 1999, Pages 471-490

  Lackey, Jennifer ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 32444441994     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00154     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. R. Audi, 'The Place of Testimony in the Fabric of Knowledge and Justification', American Philosophical Quarterly, 34 (1997), pp. 405-22, at p. 410
2. J. Ross, 'Testimonial Evidence', in K. Lehrer (ed.), Analysis and Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of R.M. Chisholm (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), pp. 35-55, at p. 53
3. M. Welbourne, 'Testimony, Knowledge and Belief', in B. Matilal and A. Chakrabarti (eds), Knowing from Words (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994, hereafter KFW), pp. 297-313, at p. 302
4. see also his 'The Community of Knowledge', The Philosophical Quarterly, 31 (1981), pp. 302-14
5. and 'The Transmission of Knowledge', The Philosophical Quarterly, 29 (1979), pp. 1-9
6. T. Burge, 'Content Preservation', Philosophical Review, 102 (1993), pp. 457-88, at p. 486
7. Other proponents of this view of testimonial knowledge include A. Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford UP, 1993), ch. 4
8. and T. Williamson, 'Knowing and Asserting', Philosophical Review, 105 (1996), pp. 489-523
9. M. Dummett, 'Testimony and Memory', in KFW, pp. 251-72, at p. 264 (my italics)
10. For different versions of non-reductivism, see Dummett; Audi; C. Coady, Testimony: a Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)
11. and 'Testimony, Observation and Autonomous Knowledge', in KFW, pp. 225-50
12. Bürge, 'Content Preservation', and 'Interlocution, Perception, and Memory', Philosophical Studies, 86 (1997), pp. 21-47
13. R. Foley, 'Egoism in Epistemology', in F. Schmitt (ed.), Socializing Epistemology: the Social Dimensions of Knowledge (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), pp. 53-73
14. For reductivist views of testimony, see E. Fricker, 'The Epistemology of Testimony', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 61 (1987), pp. 57-83
15. 'Against Gullibility', in KFW, pp. 125-61
16. and 'Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony', Mind, 104 (1995), pp. 393-411
17. J. Lyons, 'Testimony, Induction and Folk Psychology', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75 (1997), pp. 163-78
18. For proponents of this view, see R. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1981)
19. J. Pollock, Contemporary Theorks of Knowledge (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986)
20. A. Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Harvard UP, 1986)
21. See, for example, Goldman; L. BonJour, 'Externalist Theories of Epistemic Justification', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1980), pp. 53-73
22. R. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1989)
23. See, for example, K. Lehrer, 'Knowledge, Truth, and Evidence', Analysis, 25 (1965), pp. 168-75
24. and Knowledge (Oxford UP, 1974)
25. K. Lehrer and T. Paxson, 'Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief', Journal of Philosophy, 66 (1969), pp. 225-37
26. P. Klein, 'A Proposed Definition of Propositional Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy, 68 (1971), pp. 471-82
27. 'Knowledge, Causality, and Defeasibility', Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976), pp. 792-812
28. 'Misleading "Misleading Defeaters"', Journal of Philosophy, 76 (1979), pp. 382-86
29. and 'Misleading Evidence and the Restoration of Justification', Philosophical Studies, 37 (1980), pp. 81-9
30. E. Sosa, 'How Do You Know?', American Philosophical Quarterly, 11 (1974), pp. 113-22
31. and 'Epistemic Presupposition', in G. Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), pp. 79-92
32. M. Swain, Reasons and Knowledge (Cornell UP, 1981)
33. This is a slight variation of an example found in Audi (p. 420). For a similar example, see Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge UP, 1991), p. 217
34. This example undermines views of testimonial knowledge which are even weaker than (2) or (2.). For instance, John Hardwig, in 'The Role of Trust in Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy, 88 (1991), pp. 693-708, claims that speakers must believe that p in order for their testimony to give hearers good reasons to believe that p. As my example shows, however, even Hardwig's weaker thesis is false
35. For a line of argument purporting to show that widespread error of this sort is incoherent, see D. Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', in D. Henrich (ed.), Kant oder Hegel? (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983), pp. 423-38
36. L. Stevenson, 'Why Believe What People Say?', Synthese, 94 (1993), pp. 429-51
37. For convincing replies, see R. Foley and R. Fumerton, 'Davidson's Theism?', Philosophical Studies, 48 (1985), pp. 83-9; Plantinga ch. 4
38. See, for example, Ross; also P. Graham, 'What is Testimony?', The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997), pp. 227-32; Coady ch. 2
39. See, for example, K. DeRose, 'Solving the Skeptical Problem', Philosophical Review, 104 (1995), pp. 1-52
40. D. Lewis, 'Elusive Knowledge', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74 (1996), pp. 549-67