Abstract
ABSTRACT It is commonly assumed that content preservation is required for success in testimonial exchanges. Many content internalists, however, cannot endorse this assumption. They must claim instead that testimonial exchanges can often succeed when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker’s testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*. Goldberg (2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) argues that this internalist approach is epistemically problematic: it cannot maintain certain features thought to be characteristic of testimonial exchanges. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the internalist’s account is just as epistemically respectable as the traditional ‘same content’ approach favoured by externalists.
Highlights
Much work in the philosophy of testimony centres around determining the epistemic conditions on the success of a testimonial exchange
These internalist views cannot sensibly endorse the Same Content approach to testimony. This is because they claim that subjects do not often share concepts or speak a communal language but, instead, speak and think in more or less similar idiolects; as such, in most testimonial exchanges, the best a hearer can do is grasp a merely similar content to that proffered by the speaker. If this kind of internalist wants to maintain that testimonial exchanges are often successful, she must claim that these exchanges often succeed even when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker’s testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*
I presented an account of testimony, ‘SimTest’, which claims that a hearer can gain knowledge through testimony that p from testimony that p*
Summary
Much work in the philosophy of testimony centres around determining the epistemic conditions on the success of a testimonial exchange. Epistemologists debate which conditions must obtain in order for a hearer to gain knowledge that p from a speaker’s testimony that p, but they do not often debate whether p really is what the hearer must grasp Prima facie, this ‘Same Content’ approach to testimony looks pretty plausible, at least for the majority of cases. These internalist views cannot sensibly endorse the Same Content approach to testimony This is because they claim that subjects do not often share concepts or speak a communal language but, instead, speak and think in more or less similar idiolects; as such, in most testimonial exchanges, the best a hearer can do is grasp a merely similar content to that proffered by the speaker.
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