Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T02:38:29.159Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HOW TO MAKE INVIDIOUS DISTINCTIONS AMONGST RELIABLE TESTIFIERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Elizabeth Fricker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I propose an account of the supply domain for testimonial knowledge: intentional acts in which a speaker offers her word on a matter to her intended audience. Such acts are effected by speech acts of telling exploiting a shared language. From this account I derive an account of the proper doxastic response to such a telling that P, namely accepting the speaker’s offered word that P. I show that one who takes the speaker’s word is committed to holding that she was epistemically so placed as to properly offer her word – namely, that she knows that P. I use my account of the supply domain for and proper response to testimony, to show what is wrong with a thin reliabilist conception of the good supply domain for testimony. The thin conception has it that any reliable testifier is an apt source. I argue that only those who know what they state properly offer their word, and only from them can knowledge be gained through the Core Mechanism, taking the speaker’s word for what she states.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 12 , Special Issue 2: 10th Anniversary of Episteme , June 2015 , pp. 173 - 202
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Byrne, A. and Logue, H. (eds) 2009. Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Craig, E. 1990. Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fricker, E. 1994. ‘Against Gullibility’. In Matilal, B. K. and Chakrabarti, A. (eds), Knowing From Words: Western and Indian Philosophical Analysis of Understanding and Testimony, pp. 125–61. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Fricker, E. 2006. ‘Second-Hand Knowledge.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 73: 592–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fricker, E. 2012. ‘Stating and Insinuating.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 86: 61–94.Google Scholar
Fricker, E. 2014. ‘Epistemic Trust in Oneself and Others – An Argument from Analogy.’ In O'Connor, T. and Callahan, L. (eds), Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue, pp. 174–203. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fricker, E. 2015. ‘Know First, Tell Later: The Truth about Craig on Knowledge.’ In Greco, J. and Henderson, D. (eds), Epistemic Evaluations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fricker, E. Forthcoming. ‘Unreliable Testimony.’ In Kornblith, H. and McLaughlin, B. (eds), Alvin Goldman and his Critics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goldberg, S. 2006. ‘Reductionism and the Distinctiveness of Testimony.’ In Lackey, J. and Sosa, E. (eds), The Epistemology of Testimony, pp. 127–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, S. 2010. Relying on Others: An Essay in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, P. 1957. ‘Meaning.’ Philosophical Review, 66: 337–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lackey, J. 2008. Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McDowell, J. 1982. ‘Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge.’ Proceedings of the British Academy, 68: 455–79.Google Scholar
Moran, R. 2006. ‘Getting Told and Being Believed.’ In Lackey, J. and Sosa, E. (eds), The Epistemology of Testimony, pp. 272–306. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pears, D. F. 1976. ‘The Causal Conditions of Perception.’ Synthese, 33: 25–40.Google Scholar
Snowdon, P. 1980. ‘Perception, Vision and Causation.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 81: 175–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soames, S. 2008. ‘Drawing the Line between Meaning and Implicature – and Relating both to Assertion.’ Noûs, 42: 529–54.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar