From Experience to Evidence: Sensory and Testimonial

Abstract

Most evidentialists think that experiences, in some way or other, yield evidence for a person. Critics of evidentialist theories often make objections that depend on substantive assumptions about how experiences yield evidence for a person. A common set of objections turns on the assumption that a sensory experience all by itself is evidence for a person. For instance, it has been assumed that a visual experience of blood beside an unmoving naked body in a park is itself evidence that a crime has been committed. But, this assumption is false, as I will argue. Until I have additional experiences that give me reason to link the look of blood beside an unmoving body to a crime having been committed, my visual experience does not indicate to me that a crime has been committed. This point has implications across many discussions in epistemology, from theoretical discussions about whether and the extent to which there is any immediate prima facie justification given in experience, to debates about how testimony yields epistemically rational belief. Careful reflection on my argument both gives us reason to reject a number of epistemic theories and principles in the literature and motivates a powerful evidentialist case for an intimate relation between epistemic rationality and epistemic justification.