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Testimony
Edited by Peter Graham (University of California, Riverside)
About this topic
| Summary | Beliefs are often based on assertions by others: that is, on testimony. This phenomenon raises many questions. How wide is the range of testimony-based beliefs? Do all assertions play the same epistemic role, or do some assertive speech acts play special roles? Can mathematical, moral, religious, or aesthetic knowledge be transferred? A major issue in the epistemology of testimony concerns the rational role of testimony. How does comprehending an assertion rationally support a belief? According to reductionism, it provides no support; comprehension is rationally inert. The recipient must have independent rational grounds to believe the assertion. Anti-reductionism disagrees: comprehension provides prima facie, defeasible rational support. Reductionism is accused of being too demanding, anti-reductionism of being too permissive. Another issue concerns the transmission of knowledge. Is knowledge transferred from sender to receiver? Is knowledge in the chain of sources essential for the uptake of knowledge, or can assertive communication sometimes generate knowledge? |
| Key works | Welbourne 1992 is a classic book-length treatment of nearly all the major issues. Burge 1993 is a rewarding and influential anti-reductionist account. Graham 2008 is an empirically informed, proper functioning anti-reductionist account. Fricker 1994 levels the charge of excessive permissiveness against anti-reductionism. Goldberg & Henderson 2006 articulates the standard, anti-reductionist response. Moran 2005 emphasizes the interpersonal role of telling in favor of anti-reductionism. Lackey 1999 and Graham 2006 argue that testimony sometimes generates knowledge. In recent books, Lackey 2008 and Faulkner 2011 both argue, in very different ways, for a middle path between reductionism and anti-reductionism. |
| Introductions | Adler 2006 is Jonathan Adler's revised and comprehensive Stanford Encyclopedia entry. Lackey 2011 is a concise and informative survey. |
Show all references
Related
Subcategories
The Nature of Testimony (142)
Epistemic Deference (39)
Testimonial Injustice* (41)
Testimony, Misc (258)
History/traditions: Testimony
- Hume: Testimony (30)
Contents
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Material to categorize
- ◉ The Boundary-Retreat Device: No True Christian Reasoning, Identity Policing, and the Survival of Idealized Christendom.Phil Stilwell - manuscriptThis paper analyzes the "No True Christian" reply as more than an informal fallacy. At the logical level, it is a boundary-retreat device: counterexamples to Christian formation are reclassified after the fact so that the ideal category remains unstained. At the social level, it is an identity-protective practice: apostates, deconverts, abusers, hypocrites, and failed exemplars are excluded from the evidential space in which Christianity is assessed. At the existential level, it shields believers from a more troubling possibility, namely that sincere (...)
- Social Aesthetic Cognitivism.Christopher Earley - forthcoming - Synthese.Within the philosophy of art, aesthetic cognitivists aim to understand how artworks can improve our epistemic standing and how this affects our grasp of their artistic value. Social epistemologists have argued that we often improve our epistemic standing by depending upon the cognitive agency of others. Drawing upon these arguments, I argue that accounting for varieties of social epistemic and zetetic dependency is sometimes integral to explaining epistemic and artistic achievements within the arts. I demonstrate this by showing how inquiry (...)
- The Intersubjective Domain: Intersubjective Conditionality, Take-Up, and Shared Connectability under Finite Conditions.Stefan Rapp - 2026 - Zenodo.This paper examines the intersubjective domain within the project of Epistemic Reality. It asks how subjective orientation becomes co-conditioned by the orientations of others without this already implying consensus, recognition, or shared reality. The central concept is intersubjective conditionality: subjects stand under expectations, references, rules, interpretations, and forms of correction that they must take into account even when they do not accept them. -/- The paper reconstructs intersubjectivity through communicability, take-up, shared connectability, and correction. Intersubjectivity does not begin with identical (...)
- Doing Your Own Research and the Illusion of Independence.A. Geenen - forthcoming - Episteme.The phrase ‘do your own research,’ popular among fringe theorists, has been criticized for encouraging audiences not to defer to the experts. However, it also encourages the listener not to defer to the speaker either. Why do fringe theorists make confident assertions and then tell their audience not to take their word for it? I argue that telling your audience to do their own research can serve several functions for speakers with low credibility. First, it can function as an epistemic (...)
- How do Instructions Help Us Make Rational Decisions?Henry Schiller - 2026 - Linguistics and Philosophy.On one plausible story about how we rationally acquire reasons for action, an individual rationally acquires a new reason to φ only if there is something that individual learns about the world. It can also be said without much of a doubt that, in talking to each other, we sometimes rationally acquire reasons for action. This combination of claims is easy to square with declarative sentences, which we clearly use to provide each other with information when we make assertions. But (...)
- The Uncertain Stuff of Histoy: Outline of a Theory of Intentionality – Thing by Thing.Lisa Regazzoni - 2024 - History and Theory 63 (2):186-218.This article addresses the issue of historical knowledge in relation to material evidence. More specifically, it asks, What objects capture the historian's attention and what knowledge is gained from those objects? What does the historian's gaze select as “things of history” and thus as removed from a world of object assemblages and fluid matter? Is it the case that only artifacts deliberately produced or modified by humans (regardless of the purpose) count as “things of history”? Or do physical entities produced (...)
- Unintentional Monuments, or the Materializing of an Open Past.Lisa Regazzoni - 2022 - History and Theory 61 (2):242-268.This article examines the emergence of a new epistemic value that was attributed to remnants of the past during the broad debate on historical evidence in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the unintentionality of the testimony. Beginning in the early modern period, growing awareness of the partiality of historical literacy narratives regarded as intentional testimonies as well as growing interest in nonwritten pasts have led to the consideration of other kinds of relics, which have been seen as unwitting and (...)Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Explanatory Jurisdiction: Warrant, Authorization, and the Conversion of Testimony.Faruk Alpay - manuscriptThis paper argues that explanation has a neglected second-order normativity. Philosophers usually ask whether an explanation is true, warranted, understanding-producing, useful, or professionally competent. In organized inquiry, however, explanations also do things to other people's contributions. They can defeat a report, route it through a register, export it into later contexts, or close a question for action. I call the authority to perform such role-changing operations explanatory jurisdiction. The central claim is that an explanation can be warranted as an answer (...)
- La parola e l'ascolto nel processo per violenza sessuale. Per una pragmatica dei miti dello stupro in dibattimento.Eleonora Volta - 2026 - Roma: Tab Edizioni.“Le false denunce di stupro sono molto comuni”; “Una donna può sempre prevenire la violenza respingendo il suo aggressore”; “Le vere vittime denunciano immediatamente”: questi enunciati non sono solo falsi, ma esprimono narrazioni stereotipate – miti – che influenzano profondamente il modo in cui comprendiamo e comunichiamo la violenza sessuale. Il volume indaga il linguaggio nel contesto processuale e mostra come i miti dello stupro possano inficiare l’ascolto di chi rende testimonianza. -/- Prefazione di Paola Di Nicola Travaglini.
- Testimonial desire.Allan Hazlett - 2026 - Noûs 60 (2):293-312.
- L'Enquête nationale sur les femmes et les filles autochtones disparues et assassinées au Canada: Explorer la relation entre l'existence de critiques externes et la prise de parole des témoins lors des audiences communautaires.Audrey Rousseau & Louis Chartrand - 2023 - Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne De Sociologie 60 (4):708-740.Face aux taux alarmants de disparitions et d'assassinats des femmes, des filles et des personnes 2ELGBTQQIA+ autochtones au Canada et en réponse aux revendications de familles de victimes et d'associations de femmes autochtones, le gouvernement canadien a mis sur pied l'Enquête nationale sur les femmes et les filles autochtones disparues et assassinées (2016–2019). Son mandat : cerner les causes systémiques de la violence et produire des recommandations efficaces pour y remédier. Dès sa mise sur pied, et au cours de ses (...)Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Taking ET Seriously: A Responsible Framework for Evaluating Extraordinary Claims.Bruno Tonetto - manuscriptThis essay argues that intelligent extraterrestrial presence on Earth is significantly more plausible than mainstream public discourse acknowledges. The argument does not rest on claims of proof, but on a careful examination of how our collective epistemic posture toward this question has been shaped by factors largely independent of evidence: institutional secrecy dynamics, deliberate stigma creation, cultural ridicule, and a misapplication of scientific skepticism that has calcified into reflexive dismissal. When evaluated with genuine intellectual rigor rather than defensive disbelief, converging (...)
- Can We Epistemically Trust Conversational AIs?Parker DuVall - forthcoming - Spontaneous Generations.Why do we distrust conversational AI (CAI) testifiers? That is to say, why do many have the intuition that CAI are less epistemically trustworthy than a standard human testifier? While it seems like we have such a pre-theoretical intuition, we are often lacking a philosophical defense of this attitude. In this paper, I argue that testimony is more trustworthy if it is based in a first-person experience of consciousness. I start by laying out an account of CAI testimony, including considering (...)
- Blood as Infrastructure.D. Arkema - manuscriptGenesis 4:10 presents a structural puzzle that existing biblical scholarship has largely treated as anthropomorphism or narrative color: Abel’s blood “cries out” from the ground, functioning as a witness to violence without any human observer, any spoken accusation, or any procedural mechanism. The ground itself “opens its mouth” to receive the blood (4:11) and subsequently participates in the enforcement of judgment by refusing Cain its yield (4:12). This paper argues that these passages, whether or not their language is understood as (...)
- Testimoniale Skepsis und Corona.Roman Heil & Moritz Schulz - 2022 - In Rico Hauswald & Pedro Schmechtig, Wissensproduktion und Wissenstransfer unter erschwerten Bedingungen. Der Einfluss der Corona-Krise auf die Erzeugung und Vermittlung von Wissen im öffentlichen Diskurs. Alber. pp. 321-340.
- The Grounds of Knowledge and Care.Luke Golemon - 2026 - American Journal of Bioethics 26 (5):116-118.Recent work on conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) in mental healthcare highlights many interesting and controversial features. Sedlakova, Lucivero, Pavarini, and Kerasidou (2025) focus on one particular feature: epistemic trust. To avoid problems endemic to the unsettled literature, Sedlakova et al propose that we treat CAI as fictional characters (11-13). They draw on the noted epistemic and normative powers of imagination, fiction, and simulation in order to ground epistemic trust or something sufficiently normatively similar. I leave holistic evaluation of their proposal (...)
- Knowledge or Information? Shaping Constructs of Academic and Popular Sources.Jevgenija Sivoronova & Aleksejs Vorobjovs - 2026 - Metrics 3 (1):4.A pervasive trend across academia, social cognition, and general communication contexts is the interchangeable use of “information” and “knowledge”, particularly with reference to their forms—explicit knowledge, testimony, and expertise—conveyed by external sources. This raises a fundamental question: is the source perceived, considered, and validated as a reliable knowledge provider or merely as an information carrier? This study investigates seven academic and popular science sources by modelling their constructs of knowledge provision based on epistemological criteria and sociopsychological value, as manifested through (...)
- (1 other version)Conciliation without Command.Tushar Chaturvedi & Abhishek Kashyap - 2026 - Synthese.In the epistemology of peer disagreement, Conciliationism holds that discovering a disagreement with an epistemic peer rationally requires substantial revision in one’s credence. A novel explanation for this rational requirement, Accountability Thesis (Peter, Synthese 190(7):1253-1266, 2013), argues that it is grounded in irreducibly second-personal reasons arising from a relationship of mutual accountability between deliberating agents. This essay challenges this second-personal approach, arguing in favour of an explanation that invokes no irreducibly second-personal reasons. The alternative explanation, which appeals only to third-personal (...)
- Vermessene Philosophie. Konstruktion und Kontrolle wissenschaftlicher Expertise im digitalen Raum.Nicola Mößner & Klaus Erlach (eds.) - forthcoming - Ubiquity Press.In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat sich das wissenschaftliche Publizieren auch in der Philosophie vom gedruckten Werk hin zu überwiegend digitalen Formaten entwickelt. Warum aber sollte man sich in der Philosophie mit Fragen zur Infrastruktur an Universitäten befassen? Wieso sollte man als Vertreter:in dieses Faches kritisch über Prozesse des elektronischen Publizierens nachdenken? Was haben Philosoph:innen mit Bibliometrie zu tun und wie verändert das die philosophische Arbeit? Die Autor:innen des hier vorgelegten Bandes diskutieren diese Fragen kritisch und entwickeln Vorschläge für mehr Autonomie (...)Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Two Conceptions of Testimonial Undervaluation.Zhongwei Xu - 2026 - Social Epistemology.With the help of the formal structure of Bayesianism, I distinguish between two different ways in which one’s testimony can be undervalued. While the modelling in the existing literature only focuses on the undervaluation of the trustworthiness of the testimony, the undervaluation of the relevance of the testimony has not been given due attention. The undervaluation of relevance cannot be modelled with Jeffrey conditionalisation as it is traditionally practised. But it can be modelled with Adams conditionalisation or Jeffrey conditionalisation if (...)
- Unreasonable Doubt. How Strategic Science Skeptics Exploit the Argument from Disagreement.Alexander Reutlinger - 2026 - Philosophy of Science:1-47.Strategic science skeptics criticize scientific claims solely to promote non-epistemic goals. I will analyze and debunk a philosophically neglected argument exploited by strategic science skeptics: the argument from disagreement. The core of this argument is that one should lower one’s confidence in a scientific claim when having learned that there is a scientific disagreement about this claim. I will develop a (Bayesian) Justificatory Account of Multiple Testimony to provide a normative characterization of how learning about agreements and disagreements is connected (...)
- The Transmission of Knowledge via Large-Scale Technology: A Shared Agency Account.John Greco - 2026 - Social Epistemology 40 (1):87-100.It is argued that a shared agency account of large-scale knowledge transmission provides a viable way forward for understanding a variety of phenomena, including the transmission of knowledge via diverse technologies such as Wikipedia, Google Search, and Siri. In fact, the lessons learned arguably apply more generally than this. If the arguments of the paper are sound, much of what is said here will apply to large-scale knowledge generation as well, including knowledge generation via large-scale technologies. Finally, the paper considers (...)
- Natural Genius or Divine Messenger? An Analytic Framework for Evaluating Prophetic Claims.Mahmoud Hassanein - manuscriptThis paper develops a framework for evaluating prophetic claims within an analytic epistemic model. Using the Qurʾānic case as a test instance, it contrasts two explanatory hypotheses: (1) the Natural–Genius hypothesis, which interprets Muḥammad’s message as a product of exceptional but natural cognition, and (2) the Theistic–Prophetic hypothesis, which posits veridical revelation. The analysis employs Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesian reasoning to assess which hypothesis better accounts for the total evidence: the Prophet’s psychological integrity, the linguistic and moral (...)
- Aesthetic Communication.Jeremy Page - 2025 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.Can testimony provide reasons to believe some proposition about an artwork’s aesthetic character? Can testimony bring an agent into a position where they can issue an aesthetic judgement about that artwork? What is the epistemic value of aesthetic communication? These questions have received sustained philosophical attention. More fundamental questions about aesthetic communication have meanwhile been neglected. These latter questions concern the nature of aesthetic communication, the criteria that determine when aesthetic communication is successful, and the frequency of communicative success in (...)
- Incidental knowledge defended.Aleksey Kardash - 2025 - Omsk Scientific Bulletin. Series Society. History. Modernity 10 (3):92-100.The paper analyses epistemic happenstance and argues for the possibility of incidental knowledge. It considers how minimal concepts of knowledge, reflecting various basic intuitions, operate in situations where there is an influence of chance or fortunate circumstances. Based on this, a distinction is made between epistemic coincidence and epistemic causation randomness. Both types of epistemic happenstance are broader alternatives to the narrow understanding of epistemic luck that has developed in contemporary epistemology. As an example, the influence of the epistemic causation (...)
- Counter-closure principles in the age of complex software systems: a generalized challenge from AI.Matteo Baggio - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has brought a host of new epistemological challenges. One particularly pressing question is whether, and to what extent, AI systems can serve as sources of epistemic goods. Can they effectively transmit knowledge or understanding? And if they do not possess these epistemic goods themselves, can they still generate them for human users? This article explores these questions by critically examining the constraints posed by counter-closure principles – epistemological principles that allegedly cast doubt on the (...)
- The Epistemic Significance of Mind-Changing.Elise Woodard - 2025 - Episteme:688-706.Is it ever rational to change your mind based on learning that others have changed theirs? This paper answers affirmatively and explores the conditions under which learning about others’ mind-changes should prompt you to reconsider your own. I propose that learning about others’ shifts in belief can motivate further inquiry, provide information about the existence or quality of first-order evidence, and recalibrate our evaluation of the issues at stake. However, not all changes of mind are epistemically meaningful: some may be (...)
- New Waves in the Philosophy of Epistemic Authority and Expert Testimony: An Introduction to the Special Issue.Rico Hauswald & Pedro Schmechtig - 2025 - Social Epistemology 39 (6):591-596.The introduction to this special issue briefly looks at the history of socio-epistemological reflection on epistemic authority and expert testimony, and identifies four major sets of questions that have been at the center of this discussion: questions about the definition of epistemic authorities and experts, their identification, modes of deference to them, and the transfer of epistemic goods from them. It then outlines some of the ways in which the contributions to this special issue address these questions, moving beyond the (...)
- ChatGPT, Education, and Understanding.Federica Isabella Malfatti - 2025 - Social Epistemology.Is ChatGPT a good teacher? Or could it be? As understanding is widely acknowledged as one of the fundamental aims of education, the answer to these questions depends on whether ChatGPT fosters or could foster the acquisition of understanding in its users. In this paper, I tackle this issue in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I explore and analyze the set of skills and social-epistemic virtues that a teacher must exemplify to perform her job well – (...)
- Does Social Epistemic Instrumentalism Secure the Normative Authority of Epistemic Rationality?Jiayu Chen - 2025 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (1).Social epistemic instrumentalism (SEI) argues that epistemic norms derive their authority from serving collective epistemic goals, not individual aims. This paper critically examines whether SEI can explain the categorical (unconditional) authority of epistemic norms. While SEI effectively illustrates how social enforcement of truth-conducive norms constrains agents practically, it faces three vulnerabilities needing explicit attention. First, SEI ties epistemic obligations to communal participation, potentially allowing agents to evade these norms by disconnecting from their community. Second, it permits epistemic free riders—those benefiting (...)
- Epistemic minimax and related principles in the contemporary epistemic environment.Mark Alfano, Marinus Ferreira, Ritsaart Reimann, Marc Cheong & Colin Klein - forthcoming - In Mihaela Popa-Wyatt, Misinformation and Other Epistemic Pathologies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.In this chapter, we explore the prospects of epistemic minimax and related principles. Minimax is a well-known approach to choosing a strategy under conditions of risk and uncertainty. In individual cases, the minimax strategy selects the action that can lead to the least bad outcome for the agent, even if taking that action ensures that expected utility is not maximized and that best-case outcomes are impossible. In social cases, the minimax strategy selects the policy that maximizes the wellbeing of the (...)
- The Social Fabric of Understanding.Federica Isabella Malfatti - 2025 - Cham: Springer.This book is a journey of in-depth exploration into the social dimensions of understanding. As human beings, we strive to understand the world around us. The path to understanding, however, is rarely walked alone; we walk the path with others. We understand more together, by joining forces, than we would understand alone. When we understand something and come to see things clearly, it is probably because someone else has taught us, enlightened us, shared his or her perspective with us, or (...)
- Testimony and Non-Evidential Reasons for Belief (A Non-Purist Place for Interpersonalism).Florencia Rimoldi & Federico Penelas - 2025 - Episteme 22 (1):283-303.Interpersonalist theories of testimony have the theoretical virtue of giving room to the characteristic interpersonal features of testimonial exchange among persons. Nonetheless, it has been argued that they are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to accounting for the way in which testimonial beliefs may be epistemically justified. In this paper, we defend the epistemological credentials of interpersonalism, emphasizing that it is inseparable from the acceptance of non-evidential epistemic reasons to believe, which demands proper conceptual elaborations on the notions (...)
- Assertions: Deterrent or Handicap? A Reply to Graham (2020).Justin P. Bruner - 2025 - Episteme 22 (1):346-356.According to one influential tradition, to assert that p is to express a belief that p. Yet how do assertions provide strong evidence for belief? Philosophers have recently drawn on evolutionary biology to help explain the stability of assertive communication. Mitchell Green suggests that assertions are akin to biological handicaps. Peter Graham argues against the handicap view and instead claims that the norms of assertion are deterrents. Contra Graham, I argue that both mechanisms may play a role in assertive communication, (...)
- (1 other version)Doxastic Justification and Testimonial Beliefs.Emmanuel Smith - 2025 - Episteme 22 (1):179-192.I argue that a general feature of human psychology provides strong reason to modify or reject anti-reductionism about the epistemology of testimony. Because of the work of what I call “the background” (which is a collection of all of an individual's synthetizations, summarizations, memories of experiences, beliefs, etc.) we cannot help but form testimonial beliefs on the basis of a testifier's say so along with additional evidence, concepts, beliefs, and so on. Given that we arrive at testimonial beliefs through the (...)
- Learning from Others' Evidence: A Focus on Non-Epistemic Values.Anna-Maria Asunta Eder - 2025 - Episteme 22:731-743.We simplify our lives by learning from others. I focus on instances where we learn from our peers by receiving evidence that they have evidence for a hypothesis. I refer to this type of learning as "learning from others' evidence". I exclusively consider cases where we do not learn what the other agent’s evidence is; we only receive evidence that such evidence exists. I approach learning from others' evidence by exploring the following slogan, popular in epistemology. -/- (EEE-Slogan:) “[E]vidence of (...)
- Modesty Problems and Epistemic Modesty.Pietro Montanari - 2025 - In The Ancients and Their Knowledge. Puerto Rico: Diálogos. Revista del Departamento de Filosofia de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. pp. 473-529.“Modesty Problems and Epistemic Modesty”. In Pietro Montanari (invited ed.): The Ancients and Their Knowledge. In memory of David Konstan. Diálogos, LVI, 116, May 2025, pp. 473-529. Epistemic modesty is a hermeneutic category that has sometimes been used with reference to certain authors or intellectual trends in ancient thought. In this article, I present my doubts about the concept, especially when applied to ancient theories of knowledge. I begin by highlighting two plausible determinations of epistemic modesty, the first related to (...)
- “Ancient Knowledge in Perspective: Problems of Demarcation”.Pietro Montanari - 2025 - In The Ancients and Their Knowledge. Puerto Rico: Diálogos. Revista del Departamento de Filosofia de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. pp. 15-54.“Ancient Knowledge in Perspective: Problems of Demarcation”. In Pietro Montanari (invited ed.): The Ancients and Their Knowledge. In memory of David Konstan. Diálogos, LVI, 116, May 2025, pp. 15-54. -/- The main topic addressed in this introduction is demarcation between ancient and modern knowledge. My idea is that there are important differences between modern and ancient epistemologies, but they can hardly be treated in general terms (taking ancient epistemology as a whole and opposing it to modern). Specific differences need to (...)
- The Ancients and Their Knowledge.Pietro Montanari (ed.) - 2025 - Puerto Rico: Diálogos. Revista del Departamento de Filosofia de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.Pietro Montanari (Invited Ed.): The Ancients and Their Knowledge. In memory of David Konstan. Diálogos: Year LVI, no. 116, May 2025, pp. 530. ISSN-e: 2693-9339 | ISSN-L: 0012-2122. -/- A volume on ancient knowledge, in memory of a dear friend and wonderful scholar, David Konstan (1940-2024). It is the follow-up of an international workshop in which David and many other colleagues and friends took part in October 2022 at the University of Guadalajara. A huge thank you to the amazing scholars (...)
- Epistemology of Folk-Lore.Til Eyinck - 2025 - Social Epistemology.Testimony is a central concept in the epistemological debate on knowledge and learning. It is therefore surprising that testimony plays a minor role in the empirical literature on cultural learning. This raises the question of whether our approach to knowledge in epistemology might be missing out on some things when applied to cultural knowledge and its transmission. By taking the semantic component of knowledge in the compound folk-lore at face value, we aim to explore whether the concept of folklore could (...)
- Trust, testimony, and transmission: Essays in social virtue epistemology.Ísak Andri Ólafsson - 2025 - Dissertation, University of GlasgowThis thesis consists of five distinct essays within social virtue epistemology, each of which can stand independently, yet all engage with fundamental ideas surrounding trust, testimony, and knowledge transmission. The first two chapters explore knowledge transmission and testimony through a virtue epistemological lens, emphasising the challenges of accounting for testimonial knowledge while maintaining a connection between knowledge and credit. I introduce types of knowledge transmission that do not rely on joint agency or shared intentions, challenging a prominent view in virtue (...)
- Aesthetic Testimony: An Optimistic Approach by Jon Robson.Matilde Carrasco Barranco - 2024 - Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 61 (1):90-94.A book review of Jon Robson, Aesthetic Testimony: An Optimistic Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, x+166 pp. ISBN 9780192862952.
- Testimonial Injustice and the Puzzle of Hearer Culpability.Yash Agarwal - 2025 - Dissertation, Virginia TechThis paper identifies a puzzle in Miranda Fricker's account of testimonial injustice, the puzzle of hearer culpability: how is it possible for hearers to be culpable for beliefs they form on the basis of stereotypes and prejudices that regularly bypass conscious thought? In trying to solve this puzzle, I consider one way to hold hearers culpable despite stereotypes and prejudices bypassing conscious thought, that is, by focusing on the hearer's upstream epistemic practices. I then show that even factoring in upstream (...)
- Thomas Reid’s prescient vision of dual process theory.Rauf Oran - 2025 - Philosophical Explorations 28 (2):180-198.The rivalry between intuition and reasoning has long been a central topic in philosophy and cognitive science. In recent decades, Dual Process Theory (DPT) has formalised this distinction, differentiating between intuitive, automatic processes (System 1) and reflective, deliberate processes (System 2). While this duality has historical roots, Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense offers a prescient and systematic articulation of these ideas. Reid’s emphasis on common sense aligns with System 1 processes, setting his approach apart from his contemporaries who prioritised (...)
- A Case for Caregiver Testimony about the Cognitively Disabled.Sara Chan - forthcoming - Episteme:1-15.It is common for caregivers of the cognitively disabled to speak on behalf of their charges who cannot speak for themselves. Their testimony, however, is often dismissed either because of doubt about their having relevant expertise or because of worries that they are blinded by love. This paper is positioned against such dismissals. I argue that good caregivers are uniquely positioned to offer reliable and often insightful testimony about the well-being of their charges and so ought to be taken more (...)
- Thank you for misunderstanding!Collin Rice & Kareem Khalifa - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.This paper examines cases in which an individual’s misunderstanding improves the scientific community’s understanding through “corrective” processes that produce understanding from poor epistemic inputs. To highlight the unique features of valuable misunderstandings and corrective processes, we contrast them with other social-epistemological phenomena including testimonial understanding, collective understanding, Longino’s critical contextual empiricism, and knowledge from falsehoods.
- Communicating Testimonial Commitment.Alejandro Vesga - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.I argue for the Cooperative Warrant Thesis (CWT), according to which the determinants of testimonial contents in communication are given by the practical requirements of cooperative action. This thesis distances itself from conventionalist views, according to which testimony must be strictly bounded by conventions of speech. CWT proves explanatorily better than conventionalism on several accounts. It offers a principled and accurate criterion to distinguish between testimonial and non-testimonial communication. In being goal-sensitive, this criterion captures the role of weak and robust (...)
- The Testimony Gap: Machines and Reasons.Robert Sparrow & Gene Flenady - 2025 - Minds and Machines 35 (1):1-16.Most people who have considered the matter have concluded that machines cannot be moral agents. Responsibility for acting on the outputs of machines must always rest with a human being. A key problem for the ethical use of AI, then, is to ensure that it does not block the attribution of responsibility to humans or lead to individuals being unfairly held responsible for things over which they had no control. This is the “responsibility gap”. In this paper, we argue that (...)
- Glass Hospitals: Transparency and Trustworthy Interpretation in Medical and Healthcare Expertise.Ben Almassi - 2025 - Diametros 22 (82):53-63.In their recent article in this journal, Giubilini, Gur-Arie, and Jamrozik argue that there is more to expertise than individual healthcare professionals’ knowledge of their fields. To be an expert is to be recognized as a credible authority, they explain, and being a credible authority necessitates trust. Among the core ethical principles they identify for trustworthy experts in medicine and healthcare are honesty, humility, and transparency. Here I aim to affirm these authors’ linkage of expertise and trust by decoupling both (...)
- Controlling the Narrative: The Epistemology of Himpathy in Sexual Assault Trials.Margherita Grassi & Eleonora Volta - 2024 - Phenomenology and Mind 27 (27):110-123.This paper develops an original approach for theorising about himpathy by examining the courtrooms’ environment. Kate Manne (2018) defines himpathy as the excessive sympathy sometimes shown towards male perpetrators of sexual violence. While Manne discusses himpathy in connection with the moral and political problem of exonerating narratives and through the lens of testimonial injustice, we want to explore cases in which the testimony of the rape survivor is believed, but nevertheless misinterpreted due to conceptual resources that obscure women’s experience of (...)
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