Assurance Views of Testimony

Abstract

This chapter describes the assurance view of testimonial knowledge and warrant and consider a significant challenge to the view. An important but infrequently discussed variant of the assurance view holds that assurance is closely tied to assertion itself and the norms governing assertion. The assurance view is an epistemological position regarding testimonial knowledge and warrant. Krista Lawlor develops an account of assurance that is helpful in understanding what its particular character might be, as contrasted with ordinary assertion. For the assurance view, a role must be given to the assurance itself—as Lawlor understands it, the claim to knowledge—in the practice of testimony, and this role must be sufficient, under the right conditions, to provide knowledge in the audience. A central goal of the assurance view is to provide an account of what is distinctive about testimonial warrant and knowledge. Testimonial assurance is given to a specific person or persons, the audience, who must recognize it as being given to them.